Return to Rose Cottage

by Sherryl Woods

  He gave her a perplexed look. “Then why were there six cans of them in the cupboard?”

  “Because Melanie was here first and she stocked the cupboards. She loves peas.” Ashley grinned halfheartedly. “Maggie won’t touch them, either. Maybe I should consider wrapping them up and giving them to Melanie for Christmas.”

  Even as she spoke, there was a semi-hysterical note in her voice as she realized that it was entirely possible that she could still be here at Christmas, that her firm might not want her back after all, now that her sterling reputation for being on the side of the angels had been tarnished. Her three-week break, which she’d barely become resigned to, could turn into months of unemployment and indecision.

  Given that realization along with everything else, it was a miracle that she could find anything at all to joke about. Ever since she’d seen that news brief in the paper, she’d felt as if all the air had been sucked from her lungs. She hadn’t said a dozen words all during dinner. It was little wonder that Josh was reluctant to leave her, even though he had to have lost respect for her, knowing how badly she’d been deluded in the Tiny Slocum case. She was sure Josh would bolt the instant he thought she was calm enough to be left alone. That would be that, the end of a budding…what? Friend ship? Relationship?

  She regarded him thoughtfully. “Why haven’t you run for the hills by now?” Maybe the answer to that would tell her what she needed to know. Maybe it would help her to define whatever was going on between them. She liked everything in her life sorted into nice, neat cubbyholes. Up till now Josh had defied all her attempts at categorization.

  But rather than giving her the direct, uncomplicated answer she’d hoped for, he regarded her blankly. “Why would I do that?”

  “You’ve seen unmistakable evidence that I’m a terrible judge of character,” she explained. “That might be okay for the average person, but it’s a lousy trait for an attorney. I don’t even have any respect for me anymore.”

  “Come on, Ashley. I’m not about to confuse a mistake you made with who you are,” he told her. “You’re a good, decent person.”

  “You haven’t known me long enough to be sure of that,” she protested, determined not to listen to any thing positive when she was mired in this down-on-her self mood. “It’s obvious,” he contradicted just as emphatically. “Otherwise this wouldn’t be tearing you up the way it is. You’d chalk it up to experience and move right on.”

  She stared at him in shock. “How could I do that? How could anyone?”

  “Attorneys do it all the time,” he insisted. “They passionately defend people they know or suspect to be guilty because that’s their job. You said yourself that someone at your firm took over Slocum’s defense.”

  “You don’t seem to have a very high opinion of lawyers,” she observed.

  “Just a realistic one, quite possibly a better one than you do at the moment,” he said, then waved her off when she would have interrupted. “Let me finish.”

  “Fine. Go right ahead.”

  “Maybe a good attorney will try to encourage a plea bargain if the evidence is overwhelming, but ultimately his duty is to act in the best interest of his client, guilty or innocent, and to offer that client the competent defense that is the client’s constitutional right, correct?”

  “Yes,” she admitted.

  “You thought you were defending an innocent man. It turned out you were wrong. It’s not the same thing as deliberately setting out to free a guilty man.”

  Ashley refused to be placated. “It feels like the same thing. It feels as if I’m as responsible as Tiny Slocum was when he beat up yet another woman.”

  Josh looked her in the eye. “How do you think the jurors who acquitted him are feeling right now? Do you blame them? Do you think you duped them?”

  She closed her eyes and sighed. “No, not deliberately. Tiny fooled all of us. I’m sure they’re as sick at heart as I am.”

  “Add in the fact that the prosecutor and police messed up. Seems to me as if there’s plenty of blame to go around. You don’t need to take it all onto your shoulders.” He scooted his chair closer and skimmed a finger along her bare arm. “And lovely shoulders they are, too. Much too lovely to have all this weight heaped on them.”

  Ashley shuddered at his touch. It would be so easy to allow him to distract her, just for a little while. It would be wonderful to have his mouth on hers, his hands exploring her body, to feel him inside her, to give in to sensation, to let him take her hard and fast until she came apart. It was exactly what she’d wanted last night, and it was even more appealing now.

  But she wouldn’t ask him to stay, not again. Her pride wouldn’t allow it, even if her common sense wasn’t telling her that the timing was no more right to night than it had been the night before. If anything, it was worse. They would both know she was only using him to forget her troubles. That was a truly lousy thing to do to a man who’d been nothing but thoughtful and supportive.

  She grabbed Josh’s hand and pressed a kiss to his knuckles. “You should go,” she said quietly. “I need some time to think about all this.”

  “I’m not so sure you should be alone,” he said, his expression uneasy. “If you don’t want me here, how about calling one of your sisters?”

  She shook her head. “Maggie and Melanie have already listened to me moan and groan enough about all this. They came straight up to Boston to get me after the trial. If you think I’m in bad shape now, you should have seen me then. I was totally impossible and unreasonable. They threatened to have me committed if I didn’t take some time off.”

  “Really? Good for them.”

  She frowned at him. “Don’t tell me you’re a proponent of the tough love approach, too.”

  “I’m a proponent of love in all its forms,” he retorted genially. “Now let me do these dishes, and I’ll get out from underfoot.”

  “Josh, I don’t think I’m so shaken that I can’t wash a few dishes. Doing something totally mundane and mindless will be good for me,” she said, anxious for him to be gone before she changed her mind and threw her self at him.

  “If you say so,” he replied.

  “Go. Do something fun and don’t spend one second worrying about me. I promise I’ll be here in the morning, bright-eyed and ready to go fishing.”

  He studied her intently for a moment, then nodded. “Okay, then, you win. I’m out of here. Call me if you change your mind and decide you need company. It doesn’t matter what time it is. I’m not on any sort of schedule right now. I can be back here in a few minutes.”

  “I will,” she promised.

  He leaned down and gave her a hard kiss that stirred regret that she’d already decided to send him on his way.

  “Just something else for you to think about,” he teased lightly. “I don’t want you wasting your whole night on useless guilt.”

  After he’d gone, Ashley touched her lips. It had been a helluva tactic. As stressed-out as she was about things in Boston, there was a whole lot going on right here to give her pause. One of these days she’d have to figure out why she was so attracted to a man who seemed to have an endless supply of time on his hands and no noticeable goals that she’d been able to discern.

  Josh wasn’t happy about leaving Ashley alone, but the stubborn set of her jaw had told him she wasn’t going to give him any alternative. Better to go gracefully than add to her stress by digging in his heels and staying put. Besides, he had some thinking of his own to do. Maybe this was the perfect opportunity. Ironically the questions plaguing Ashley were not that much of a stretch from those bothering him.

  Not that he’d gotten a murderer off recently. He swam in a different legal pond, mostly with the corporate barracudas. It was cutthroat law of a different kind, and he’d pretty much concluded months ago that he wasn’t suited for it. He was always hired to represent one side, but he was too damn good at seeing both sides of the picture, especially in some of the high-stakes mergers and acquisitions he h
andled. His evenhanded judgment made it a lot harder to go for the jugular, even when that was precisely what he was being paid to do.

  People who hired Brevard, Williams and Davenport could pay for the best representation available. More and more lately, Josh had wanted to be on the side of the little guy who couldn’t afford the big guns. Maybe this was his chance to do just that. He had no financial obligations, no family to consider. If he was ever going to dramatically alter his income and lifestyle, now was the time.

  A part of him wanted to go back to Ashley’s and bat the whole idea around with her for a while. He had a hunch she would bring a unique perspective to the picture. Maybe it would even help her wrestle with her own dilemma. They could be sounding boards for each other, at least once she got over the shock of discovering that he was one of those lawyers she thought he held in such disdain.

  He sighed and dismissed the idea. Ashley didn’t want a sounding board right now. She wanted to hibernate and lick her wounds. He honestly couldn’t blame her. He’d give her tonight to do that, but come morning, he was going to be back over there and was going to insist they talk her situation out some more, especially if she was still neck-deep in guilt.

  “You look like a man with a lot on his mind.” Mike startled Josh out of his reverie when he found Josh still sitting behind the wheel of his car in his driveway after he’d driven home from Ashley’s.

  “Just thinking about this and that,” Josh said, climbing out of the car and plastering a fake smile of welcome on his face. “What are you doing here?”

  “Actually I was out for a walk and saw your car turn in. I decided I’d stop by and see if you wanted a little company. Melanie and Jessie went shopping for school supplies so I’m at loose ends.”

  Josh grinned at the restless note in Mike’s voice. “Is that what marriage does to you, makes you incapable of being on your own for a few hours?”

  Mike laughed. “Pretty much. I’m still shocked by that myself.” He gave Josh a speculative look. “You’re on your own pretty early, too. Did Ashley kick you out?”

  “She had some things she needed to think through,” he said, careful not to allude to what those things were. If she didn’t want her family to know, it wasn’t up to him to spill the beans.

  “About your relationship?” Mike prodded.

  “No way. To hear her tell it, we don’t have a relationship.”

  “I see. What’s your take on that?”

  Josh gave the question some serious thought. He liked her, no question about that. He was attracted to her. Definitely no question about that, either. Did they have a future? How could he possibly answer that when neither of them had a clue what they really wanted for the rest of their lives, professionally speaking, anyway? He settled for giving a reply that was honest as far as it went.

  “I think that depends on how determined she is to go back to Boston,” he told Mike. “There’s not much chance of having a relationship with someone whose life is hundreds of miles away.”

  Mike didn’t seem convinced. “You hear about long-distance relationships working all the time. They’re tough, but it can be done if both people are committed to it.”

  “I think it’s a little soon for either of us to be thinking about commitment. We barely know each other.”

  “Sometimes the whole lightning-bolt thing happens,” Mike reminded him. “It happened that way for me and Melanie. Same thing with Rick and Maggie. Maybe it’s the way things go with the D’Angelo women.”

  Josh thought of how connected he sometimes felt to Ashley, far more connected than he’d ever felt to Stephanie, despite having known Stephanie so much longer. Maybe Mike was right. Maybe time had nothing to do with love. Still, for a plodder like him, it seemed wrong to be thinking of jumping from thoughts of an eventual engagement to a certain woman one day, to a full-throttle relationship with another woman a few days later. A full-throttle affair, maybe, but he’d already vetoed that idea.

  “Let’s not jump the gun,” he told Mike. “I don’t think Ashley’s in the best place to be worrying about a relationship with anyone right now.”

  Mike regarded him with pity. “A word of advice, don’t wait for her to decide or to be in the right place. If you want her, let her know it. If you want her to stay here, then pull out the big guns and persuade her to stay. If she’s anything like her sisters, this area is in her blood just as much as Boston is, but it might take a little push to help her realize that.”

  Josh nodded. “I’ll keep that in mind. Now how about a beer?” he suggested, anxious to change the subject. “We can swap lies and gossip about everyone we know except the D’Angelo women.”

  Mike laughed. “Total avoidance. It’s a great tactic. I used it a lot. In the end, it didn’t matter. You can get those women out of your head, but it’s impossible to get them out of your blood.”

  Josh was beginning to get that. Oddly, it didn’t terrify him half as much as it should have.

  It took a great deal of courage for Ashley to call Jo in Boston the minute Josh left. There were things she needed to know. If her life as she knew it was over, she needed to start making an adjustment right now. She’d have to scale down her lifestyle, find a whole new career, maybe even move to some other city.

  “Slow down,” she scolded herself as she dialed her sister’s number. “This isn’t the time for making rash decisions. Get the facts first.”

  Jo picked up on the fourth ring, her tone hesitant.

  “Hey, it’s me,” Ashley said.

  “Thank God. I almost didn’t pick up.”

  “Why?”

  “The media,” Jo said succinctly. “They’re trying to track you down. This latest beating—you have heard about it, right?”

  “I’ve heard.”

  “Well, as you can imagine, it’s stirred them up all over again. They want your reaction to it.”

  “I’m so sorry. You need to get caller ID.”

  “No, I don’t. This will pass. How are you? How did you find out, anyway? I was hoping it hadn’t made the news down there.”

  “There was an item in the Richmond paper,” Ashley admitted. “So how bad is it? Are the papers screaming for my head?”

  “Of course not,” Jo said.

  Unfortunately, her baby sister was a terrible liar. Ashley heard the faint hesitation in her voice.

  “Come on, Jo. What are they saying? Tell the truth. If you don’t, I’ll just have to call the office and ask them what’s going on. Something tells me they won’t sugar-coat anything. I’ll be lucky to have a job. They loved having me on board when I was saving the innocent and bringing in great PR for the firm, but now? I can’t imagine they’re happy about this.”

  “Okay, it’s bad,” Jo admitted. “But that’s today. The beating just took place yesterday. Everyone’s bound to be in an uproar. Things will quiet down in a few days. One paper already put some perspective on the story by asking how the prosecution and cops screwed up the first trial so badly. They’ve stopped focusing on you completely.”

  “That doesn’t mean I’m off the hook, even with that paper. It just means that the prosecutor and police are dangling on the hook with me,” Ashley said cynically. She bit back a sigh. “Maybe I should go back and face the music.”

  “Absolutely not,” Jo said. “You stay right where you are. We’re all agreed about that.”

  “Everyone in the family knows?”

  “Mom and Dad do, of course. They’ve been getting the same calls I have.”

  “Dammit,” Ashley muttered. “I’ll call them and tell them not to answer the phone.”

  “No need. I think Dad’s actually enjoying giving the media an earful about irresponsible reporting. You know how he is when anyone picks on one of his baby girls.”

  The reminder almost brought a smile to Ashley’s lips. Max D’Angelo was a stereotypical overly protective Italian father. Nobody hurt one of his daughters. Heck, it was a wonder any of them had ever had a date, given the way he l
oomed over every male to cross the threshold. As teenagers, they had all been driven crazy by it.

  Now Ashley could only be grateful for her father’s innate protectiveness. He’d stand between her and an entire army of reporters and photographers, if need be.

  “He’s something, isn’t he?” she said.

  “He loves you to pieces,” Jo said. “Don’t worry about him and Mom, okay? They just want to be sure you’re all right. They think Rose Cottage is the perfect place for you till this mess settles down. They’re relieved that you’re not here in the thick of it.”

  “Have you spoken to Maggie or Melanie?”

  Jo hesitated. “Don’t be furious with me. I did try to call them to let them know what had happened, so they could decide the best way to break the news to you, but neither one was home. This wasn’t the kind of message I wanted to leave on a machine. I think you should tell them, though. You shouldn’t be alone.”

  “I’m not alone. Well, I am now, but Josh was here until about a half hour ago. I sent him home.”

  “Josh?” Jo repeated, immediately intrigued. “Spill, big sister. Who is Josh?”

  Ashley was surprised. “You mean the family grapevine has failed you? I thought surely you would have had detailed reports by now. Maggie and Melanie are certainly making a lot out of the fact that I met a man a few hours after my arrival.”

  “An interesting man?”

  “That’s one description,” she conceded.

  “What’s a better one?”

  Ashley thought about that before answering. “He’s soothing,” she said eventually.

  “Soothing? As in boring?”

  She laughed. “No, he’s definitely not boring.”

  “Not the least bit sexy?”

  “Oh, he’s sexy, all right.”

  “Really?” Jo said with more enthusiasm. “Now it’s getting interesting. Tell me more, Ashley. Are you going to follow the family tradition and fall madly in love while you’re at Rose Cottage?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I have way too much on my mind to even think about a man right now.”