She eyed him speculatively. “If you were facing criminal charges I’d call you a flight risk.”
“Why would I run?” he asked. He’d do it, if that’s the way the dust settled. If push came to shove, he was prepared to do whatever was necessary to keep his children with him—and safe. But he really didn’t expect it to come to that.
“You’d take off, because you’re one of the good guys,” she answered. “Sounds like a contradiction, but I think you know what I mean.”
He did. And was glad she thought so. It was also the reason he wanted her to leave. To keep her as far from the ugliness as he could. “I appreciate the vote of confidence. But I don’t need it. This hearing won’t amount to a hill of beans. The judge will dismiss the case. Possession is nine-tenths of the law.”
“Custody cases are unpredictable and it doesn’t matter who’s got possession of the kids or for how long.”
“Objection noted. But I really do have to go.”
Before she could rebut, and before he didn’t have what it took to walk away from her, he turned and joined his experienced attorney in the front of the room. Age and wisdom must count for something, he thought. Just like Jen said. He sat down beside his lawyer and faced the judge’s bench. Why did it feel so much like being a teenager facing the music?
When the fiftyish, blond woman in a flowing black robe took her place on the bench, Grady sucked in a deep breath and braced himself. He knew her. She was caring and fair.
“All rise for the Honorable Judge Rebecca Kellerman,” the bailiff’s deep voice echoed.
She settled herself, then looked at the sparsely filled courtroom. “I’m ready to hear arguments from both sides,” the judge announced.
Grady’s lawyer was first and outlined all the reasons the suit should be thrown out. Grady O’Connor had raised the girls from birth. He was the only father they’d ever known. It was paramount to maintain stability for the children. And it had been the birth mother’s dying wish for him to take her children.
Then it was the slick Dallas attorney’s turn. He made a case that genetics should be taken into consideration. His client was their blood kin, and wasn’t it better for children to be raised by a relative? Since Sheriff O’Connor wasn’t kin, could it be he kept the children because it gave him access to the prosperous ranch on their mother’s side?
Grady’s lawyer countered that the twins had never met their uncle. How did anyone know for sure he was kin? Where had he been all this time? The lawsuit was frivolous and without merit. It was a waste of the court’s time to even consider it.
Finally the judge held up her hands for quiet. “Gentlemen, the arguments on both sides are compelling. Children need stability and the only good reason for upsetting the applecart is family. The importance of roots can’t be discounted—”
“Your Honor, may I confer with counsel?”
The soft, sexy female voice sent hot and cold running need up and down Grady’s back. He turned and looked at Jen. What the hell was she up to?
The judge peered over the granny glasses on the end of her nose. “Who are you?”
“I’m an attorney. I was married to Zach Adams, the man who allegedly fathered the twins in question.”
“You may approach.”
Jensen walked forward, through the swinging wooden gates. She met Grady’s gaze, then bent her head and whispered to his attorney, who nodded.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
Clark held up his hand for quiet. Frustration gnawed at Grady’s gut. In about two seconds he could take his quiet and shove it.
Finally the judge cleared her throat. “I don’t have all day, Counselor.”
Jen slid Grady an unreadable look just before she walked back to the spectators’ chairs and sat.
Clark stood. “Your Honor, we’d like to request that DNA testing be done on all parties involved to establish beyond any shadow of doubt paternity of the twins in question.”
“But I thought the father was deceased,” the judge said.
“That’s true. But DNA is in every cell of the body—including hair. Miss Stevens has kept a lock of her husband’s. That will provide a sample for examination. We submit that Sheriff O’Connor, the twins and Mr. Adams also be tested. Then we’ll know exactly where we stand and can proceed accordingly.”
Grady stood up, his nerves raw. “No one is contesting paternity.” What did she hope to gain by providing the enemy with ammunition?
“Sit down, Sheriff. You should know I don’t permit outbursts in my courtroom.”
“Emotions are running high,” Clark said. “It’s true, no one has questioned the father’s identity. But the claim has cast some doubt about the deceased’s reputation. His widow would like to know the truth—whatever it might be.”
Judge Kellerman leaned forward. “His widow isn’t a petitioner in the case.”
“Also true.” Clark cleared his throat. “But isn’t it in the best interests of the children for all the facts to be known?”
The judge was quiet for several moments. “Gentlemen, after taking everything into consideration, it’s still my opinion that family is important and shouldn’t be discounted.”
Grady couldn’t breathe. This wasn’t good. Certainly not what he’d expected.
Judge Kellerman looked from one table to the other. “I’m ordering that DNA tests be done on the girls, the man who claims to be their uncle, Sheriff Grady O’Connor who now retains custody, and the deceased who is allegedly the father. When the results are in we will reconvene to hear them. We’ll go from there. Thank you, gentlemen.”
She swept out of the courtroom and Grady didn’t know whether to heave a sigh of relief or not. No one had ordered him to surrender the girls. But it wasn’t over as easily as he’d expected, either.
He glanced over his shoulder. The courtroom was empty. Jen was gone. What in the world had she been thinking? She’d convinced him she was sympathetic to his situation and sincerely wanted to help. He just didn’t understand how proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that Billy was their biological uncle would do him any good.
“What now?” he asked his lawyer.
“Like the judge said—DNA tests,” Clark answered. “I’ll arrange for that with Dr. Morgan.”
“How long will it take?” Grady asked.
“Haven’t a clue. Never done this before,” he mumbled, scratching his snow-white head. “Hard to keep up with modern science.”
Grady would have bet his sheriff’s badge Jensen knew how long tests like that would take. Maybe he could… Nope, he wasn’t going there. This wasn’t her baby to rock. And he planned to tell her so.
“I need to talk to someone,” Grady said.
“You do that, son. In the meantime, I’ll do some research on case law for this. See if I can find a precedent in our favor. But I gotta tell you, I’ve never run across anything like this situation in all the time I’ve been practicing law.”
Great. Just what he’d wanted to hear. How to win confidence and influence destiny, Grady thought ruefully. He’d expected the case would be thrown out and it hadn’t been. Jen had said custody cases could be unpredictable. She was young, smart and this was what she did for a living. She’d offered to help him retain custody. Yet, she’d convinced the judge to order DNA tests. If he’d officially accepted her legal assistance, could she have hurt his cause more? Why would she do this to him? There was no rhyme or reason to it. Any more than there was justice in the fact that she stirred his blood as no woman ever had.
“I’ll see you later, Clark.”
The older man nodded absently as Grady turned away. Stepping outside, Grady waited several moments for his eyes to adjust to the bright light. He took his mirrored sunglasses from his suit pocket and put them on. That was when he spotted Jen talking to Billy Bob Adams. They were standing in the shade, by the stone wall of the courthouse dominating the square in the center of downtown Destiny.
A red haze swallowed Grady whole. He did
n’t want that low-life creep anywhere near Jen, let alone smiling his sleazy smile at her. Then Billy touched her hair, tucking a strand behind her ear. Grady saw her shudder and duck her head away. It was all the excuse he needed.
He was beside them in two strides, just in time to hear the jerk say, “How about I buy you a beer? To say thanks for what you did in there.”
Grady stepped in front of Jen. He insinuated himself between her and harm, then grabbed the front of Billy’s shirt. “Get the hell away from her.”
Fear chased the self-satisfied, predatory look from Billy’s face. “Grady O’Connor, as I live and breathe,” he said in a shaky voice.
“You have no idea how much I wish I could change that,” Grady growled. “Get away from her.”
Billy held up his hands in surrender. “Am I steppin’ on toes? I had no idea she was your woman. Just trying to be friendly to a pretty lady.”
Grady ignored the insinuation. “Like at the championships? When you were talking to my girls?”
“My nieces,” he countered.
“What the hell are you up to, Adams?”
“They’re my family.”
“If you really cared about them, you’d have shown up years ago.” Rage billowed through him. “You won’t get away with this.”
“That’s for the court to decide.”
Two small hands gripped his arm, squeezing. Through his all-consuming fury he became aware that someone shook him. He looked down into Jen’s worried green gaze.
“You shouldn’t talk to him outside of court, Grady. Back off.”
“Yeah, do as the lady says.”
“Shut up.” Jen glared at him. “Don’t you ever come near me again.”
The man held out his hands in a pleading gesture. “But we’re practically family. You’re my sister—”
“No!”
Because she was still holding his arm, Grady felt her tremble. He let Billy go and put an arm around her shoulders, tucking her snugly against his side.
Grady pointed at the other man. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll drop this whole thing and get the hell out of Destiny. And never show your face around here again or I’ll make you sorry you ever started this.”
“Is that a threat, Sheriff?”
“It’s a promise, Adams.”
“We’ll see about that.” He shoved his fingers through his sandy hair as resentment flared in his shifty pale blue eyes. He was short, wiry and had weasel written all over him.
Grady could smell the type a mile away. Chip on his shoulder. Figured the world owed him a living. A coward who took the easy way out. And the blackest mark against him: he was related to the man who’d caused this whole stinking mess in the first place. The only good to come out of it was the twins.
Without another taunt or threat, Billy brushed the back of his hand across his mouth, then walked down the courthouse steps and got into a battered old truck parked in the lot. After starting the motor, he gunned the engine, then hit the gas and with a screech of tires left the lot.
Jen watched him with a look of distaste on her face. “Good riddance to bad rubbish,” she said.
Grady dropped his protective arm. “You could have fooled me.”
She shielded her eyes from the sun as she looked up at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I just saved your bacon, Counselor. And after what you did in that courtroom, I can’t for the life of me figure out why.”
“I was doing just fine on my own, Sheriff.” Her eyes glittered like emeralds. “And to set the record straight, I believe I saved your bacon in that courtroom. Or at least I threw it in the frying pan.”
“I’ll go along with that. I just hope we’re not out of it and into the fire on account of you.” He loosened his tie. “Where in the world did you get the bright idea that DNA tests to prove that Billy is a blood relative would help?”
“Yeah, if—”
“If you didn’t believe me about Zach, why didn’t you just say so?”
“If I didn’t believe you, I would have called you a liar to your face,” she shot back.
Her eyes zinged daggers in his direction. She took his breath away—angry as all get-out, but so punch-to-the-gut beautiful it was all he could do not to pull her into his arms. How stupid was that?
“And you figure that stunt you pulled helped me—how?” he asked, trying to find some distance from her.
“Don’t you see, Grady? The family tie weighed pretty heavily with the judge.”
“Yeah, I noticed.”
“Your lawyer’s argument was…”
“The judge said it was compelling,” he pointed out.
“As far as it went.”
“So you rode to the rescue like the Lone Ranger.”
She grinned. “I like that.”
“It wasn’t a compliment,” he said. He knew what he was doing. It didn’t take a hundred-dollar-an-hour shrink to tell him he was arguing with her on purpose to push her away. “Just what the hell did you think you’d accomplish by suggesting the damn DNA test, bright eyes? Or maybe I should call you Benedict Arnold?”
“I bought you some time, Sheriff.”
“And just how do you think that’s going to help? It won’t change the facts. I’ve got Jack working on the case.”
“Jack just found out he has a daughter.”
Grady ran a hand through his hair. “I heard. He’s the father of Maggie Benson’s daughter.”
“Yeah,” she agreed. “That’s a pretty major distraction and he’ll need some time to deal with it. We need to cut him a little slack. But we can’t stop trying to come up with something on Billy.”
“Damn it,” he said. “If I could convince the city council to increase my budget, I’d have computer technology that isn’t—”
“Nearly as old as Clark Livingston?”
He ignored her. “By the time I can upgrade, maybe I’ll be able to bring the department into the twenty-first century.”
“More important than the equipment are Jack’s contacts. He’ll find something. If he’s got the time to look.”
Grady didn’t like the worried expression marring the smooth skin of her forehead. After the unexpected turn of events in court, his confidence wavered. “You think the judge is going to give him custody?”
“I think he’s got some explaining to do. Like where he’s been for the last nine years. You said he was in trouble as a juvenile. Wouldn’t surprise me if he’s got a record.”
“Because a leopard can’t change his spots,” he agreed.
Jen was on his side. Relief spread through him like warm on a sunny day.
She nodded. “There’s no reason to believe he’s an upstanding citizen now. You checked him out and couldn’t find diddly. With Jack’s contacts and expertise, he can go where a small-town sheriff has never gone before. I’m convinced he’ll find something useful. If he’s got some space.”
He nodded. “Okay.”
“Okay? That’s all you can say? What about you think I’m brilliant? Then there’s the ever-popular you don’t know what you’d have done if I hadn’t had the audacity to stick my nose in where it didn’t belong in the courtroom? And how about—”
He tapped her nose. “It’s awfully cute.” Her mouth was open but no words came out. “What? Nothing to say, Counselor?”
He wished she would say something, because he so wanted to pull her against him. The memory of how good it felt to kiss her was never far from his mind. He wanted to do it again. Badly. He’d wanted to put his hands around Billy’s neck and squeeze because he’d had the nerve to touch her. How was that for the town sheriff sworn to uphold the law?
Jensen Stevens did things to him, things he’d never experienced before.
She took a deep breath. “You showed a lot of restraint when you came storming out of the courthouse. I thought you were going to deck him—on account of the girls,” she added.
He took his suit jacket off and slung it over
his shoulder, holding it by one finger. With one hand occupied, it would be a bigger challenge to take her in his arms. “I wanted to deck him,” he admitted. “I heard what he said when he touched your—touched you.”
Her forehead wrinkled as she thought. Then she nodded. “The beer thing.”
“Yeah.”
“Is that what made you think I was on his side?”
“It didn’t help.”
“Don’t you worry your pretty little head. I’d rather chew off my own arm than have a brewski with sludge like him.” She shivered. “So you wanted to deck him on my account?”
“Yeah,” he said, even though her smile said she was teasing. He couldn’t stop himself. As soon as the single word was out of his mouth, he wanted it back in the worst way.
What had made him admit that out loud? To her? Confusion had dogged him ever since she’d come back to Destiny. He’d never experienced the gut-wrenching, knock-you-for-a-loop, want-to-be-with-someone-every-waking-moment kind of thing for a woman. He’d made peace with the fact that those feelings wouldn’t happen to him.
Somehow, from the second she’d driven up in her sporty BMW, she’d sneaked inside him and snagged his attention before he knew what was happening. But Jensen Stevens, Destiny’s golden girl, was the kind of woman he would spend his whole life not having. Prevention was the best treatment; he couldn’t hope for a cure. No, his best bet was finding a way to resist her.
“Now that you know whose side I’m on, let me take this opportunity to tell you that I’ll give you a professional discount for my legal services.”
“Forget it, Jen.” He took her elbow. “I’ll see you safely home.”
She pulled her arm away. “Number one, I’m not going home. Number two, why should I need you to see me anywhere? Number three, you want to tell me how I can forget it?”
“Billy is out there somewhere and I don’t trust him as far as I could throw him. He messed with you and the girls once. I don’t plan to let him get another chance.”
“My hero.”
He got the feeling she wasn’t being a smart aleck, and the compliment warmed his blood and sent it racing through his veins, mostly to points south.
“So why should I forget about the case?” she asked.
What If We Fall in Love? Page 6
