Return to Rose Cottage

by Sherryl Woods

Maggie frowned at him. “You’re not helping.”

  Ashley turned to Rick. “It has nothing at all to do with me?”

  “How could it? He doesn’t know what you intend to do.”

  Her spirits sank. “I see.”

  Maggie gave her a hard hug. “Stop it. You look as if it’s over. It’s not. You have a second chance. You just have to grab it the minute he gets back to town.”

  Ashley nodded slowly. Her pride was screaming that Josh ought to make the first move. She’d try to tell her pride to shut up and be reasonable, but the reality was that she usually let it rule her decisions. Wasn’t it pride that had made her scurry out of Boston just when she should have stayed there with her head held high? Her uncharacteristic retreat had probably only fueled the media frenzy she’d left in her wake.

  She made a decision of her own then. “I have something I need to do,” she told Maggie and Rick, gathering up her purse and the jacket she’d worn over.

  “What?” Maggie asked.

  “I’m going home.”

  “Home?”

  She nodded. “To Boston. There are some things I need to take care of.”

  Her sister’s gaze narrowed. “But you’ll be back?”

  “In a few days.”

  Rick looked completely confused. “What should I tell Josh if he asks?”

  Ashley and Maggie both turned to him at once. “Stay out of it!” they said in a chorus.

  He frowned at both of them. “Is it any wonder men don’t understand women? You keep changing the blasted rules on us.”

  Ashley gave her brother-in-law a kiss on the cheek. “Stick around, pal. You’ll get the hang of it eventually. I can see your potential. Obviously Maggie can, too, or she wouldn’t have married you.”

  “Small consolation,” he grumbled, but he pulled Maggie into his arms and kissed her so thoroughly it made Ashley’s mouth go dry.

  “I’m out of here,” she said hurriedly.

  She was pretty sure neither one of them heard her or even gave a damn.

  The meeting with Creighton went off with surprisingly few hitches, Josh concluded after the lunch ended. Oh, the man had grumbled and carried on about Josh being ungrateful and shortsighted, but in the end it was obvious that he wanted his daughter to be happy and he respected Josh enough to accept the decision he had made, as well. They had parted on good terms, with the door at the firm always open if Josh woke up one morning and realized he’d made a tragic mistake, which Creighton direly predicted Josh would most certainly do.

  Josh was so eager to get back and find Ashley that he decided against staying over in Richmond for the night to put his condo on the market, and drove straight back down to Idylwild instead. Rick and Mike had been right. He couldn’t allow this misunderstanding to fester until it turned into something insurmountable. He had to be the one to hold out an olive branch.

  But when he arrived around dinnertime, he couldn’t find Ashley at Rose Cottage or anywhere else in town. Finally, as a last resort, he drove out to Maggie’s. When she answered the door, she gave him a hard look.

  “Yes?” she said in a tone that would have made him quake if he hadn’t seen the twinkle in her eyes.

  “I’m looking for Ashley.”

  “You’re too late.”

  His heart fell. “Too late?”

  “She went back to Boston.”

  Josh felt as if someone had punched him in the stomach. “I see.”

  Maggie shook her head and regarded him with pity. “You’d better come in. I can’t have you passing out on my doorstep. Ashley would never forgive me.”

  “I’m not going to pass out,” he said with more spirit.

  “Come in, anyway. Based on your unmistakable reaction to the news, we probably need to talk.”

  He frowned at the determined note in her voice. He didn’t trust that tone one bit. “Again?”

  She laughed. “Oh, don’t whine, Josh. I’ll make it relatively painless.”

  “You might as well do it,” Rick called out. “Otherwise she’ll just have to hunt you down. Believe me, persistence is one of her best traits. Sticking around now will save time in the long run.”

  Josh focused on Rick as he stepped inside. “Thank goodness,” he muttered. “A friendly face.”

  “Don’t rely on my husband to save you,” Maggie warned. “I want to know what your intentions are toward my sister and I want to know now. And just to give you a fair heads-up, they’d better be honorable.”

  Josh gave her an amused look. “Isn’t that a little old-fashioned?”

  “What can I say?” she said, not backing down. “I’m an old-fashioned girl. And in the absence of my father, it’s my duty to get a few things straight with you.” She gave him another of those hard looks. “Or, if you prefer, I can call him and drag him down here first thing in the morning. He’s chewed up and spit out men like you every day since we hit sixteen.”

  Josh glanced at Rick, who was clearly getting entirely too much enjoyment out of the whole scene. “You could help, you know.”

  Rick shook his head. “Sorry, pal. You’re on your own with this one. Maggie’s a reasonable woman.”

  She beamed at him. “Thank you.”

  “Just being honest,” Rick assured her. He grinned at Josh. “Tell the truth and you have nothing to fear.”

  Josh shot a sour look in his direction, then turned it on Maggie. “I repeat, isn’t this a conversation I should be having with Ashley?”

  Maggie returned his look with a perfectly bland expression. “That depends,” she said sweetly. “She’s not here at the moment. I am. And, trust me, you won’t ever get close enough to talk to her unless I like what I hear.”

  Josh shook his head. “Then I’d say we’re at an impasse, because I don’t intend to discuss this with you. Suffice it to say that it is not my intention to hurt your sister.”

  “You already have,” she reminded him.

  “Not deliberately,” he replied. “And she didn’t exactly make me feel all fluttery and special. She thought I was a fisherman.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with fishing for a living,” Maggie said. “It’s a perfectly respectable profession, especially around here.”

  “I agree, but it was plain that your sister didn’t see it in such a positive light. She acted as if she’d been doing me a damn favor by condescending to sleep with me when I had nothing at all to offer her.” The bitterness welled up again as he spoke. He hated that their relationship had begun with lies, evasions and misunderstandings, but it was too late to change that. They had to deal with who they really were and the undeniable attraction that couldn’t be dismissed just because of hurt feelings.

  Maggie regarded him with surprising compassion. “I’m sorry. You have no idea how terrible she feels about that. Ashley isn’t a snob. If anything, she was just trying to protect herself from emotions that were too huge for her to accept.”

  “Small comfort,” Josh said. Ironically, even as he spoke with such sarcasm, he realized it was true. It was some comfort to know that she’d been in deeper than she’d expected to be and had latched onto any excuse for an escape.

  “She loves you,” Maggie said more gently. “She really does.”

  He met her sympathetic gaze and finally found the courage to admit what he hadn’t said to anyone else, including himself. “I love her, too.”

  A grin filled with unmistakable relief spread across Maggie’s face. “There now,” she said, patting his arm. “That wasn’t so difficult, was it?”

  He couldn’t help grinning at her obvious sense of triumph. “No worse than a tooth extraction,” he retorted. “Now may I please go?”

  “Where? Boston?”

  “Absolutely not,” he said at once. “If this is going to work, it has to work here. She has to come back on her own.” He studied Maggie intently. “Think she will?”

  “Not a doubt in my mind.”

  Josh nodded. He was counting on the fact that no one knew the D�
�Angelo sisters any better than they knew each other.

  15

  Ashley stood in front of a bank of television and radio microphones and drew in a deep breath. This was it. This was what she should have had the courage to do weeks ago. She was going to face the people of Boston and the family of Letitia Baldwin and admit that she had lost sight of the promise she had made to herself when she first went into law…to focus on justice, not winning. Perhaps it simply wasn’t practical to believe that every client she defended would be innocent, but she had in tended to do her very best not to fall prey to the cynicism that afflicted too many criminal defense attorneys.

  “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,” she said at last, proud that neither her gaze, nor her voice faltered, not even when she spotted her parents and Jo in the back of the room. Her sister gave her a broad smile and a thumbs-up gesture.

  “Thank you for coming. I have a brief prepared statement and then I’ll take a few of the questions I’m certain you’ve stored up in my absence.”

  The last drew a laugh from some of the veteran re porters at the front of the pack. They all knew that she’d never before been reticent with the media. In fact, she’d always enjoyed a lively give-and-take with most of them. Her silence since that awful day in the courtroom had spoken volumes. It had conveyed her sense of shame and guilt, emotions she had to put behind her if she was ever to function effectively in a courtroom again.

  She glanced at the cameramen to be sure they were set up. “Shall we get started?” At their nods, she looked directly into the closest camera. “Although I have done so privately, I would like to publicly apologize to Letitia Baldwin’s family, as well as to the people of this city for the part I played in the miscarriage of justice that occurred in Tiny Slocum’s trial. I could tell you that I was just doing my job and that would be true, but it’s a sad truth when a guilty man goes free because of it. I could tell you that I believed in Tiny Slocum’s innocence and that would be true as well, but it doesn’t say much about my judgment, and for that I am deeply sorry.”

  Her chin rose a notch. “I know that I can’t change any of that, but I can promise you and, just as importantly, myself, that I will never again go into a case without evaluating the impact of my defense more thoroughly and being absolutely certain in my heart that what I’m doing serves the cause of justice. I owe that much to the honor of this profession.”

  She swallowed hard and fought to hold her gaze steady. “Now I’ll take those questions.”

  “Ms. D’Angelo, will you continue to practice law?” Lynda Stone, daytime anchor for a network affiliate, asked. “And why haven’t you been around to answer questions?”

  They’d never gotten along and it seemed to Ashley as if the woman was eager to gloat over Ashley’s cur rent professional predicament. Ashley met her gaze evenly. “Let me answer the last question first. I needed some time to think about what had happened and my role in it. As for your other question, absolutely, I will continue to practice law, though I’ll admit to having had a lot of self-doubts in recent weeks. In the end, I realized that I still believe passionately in our legal system. Nothing is perfect, but it’s the best one on the face of the earth. And I think I can still make a valuable contribution.”

  “Really?” Ms. Stone asked, her voice laced with skepticism. “You honestly think you can be effective after this? Will any jury trust you?”

  “One case, one mistake, doesn’t negate a track record like mine,” Ashley said succinctly. “And cases should be won or lost based on the evidence, not the attorneys involved. In the end, that’s what happened in this one. Sadly, the prosecutor didn’t come into the case fully prepared with indisputable evidence. I’ll leave it to others to decide if the fault was his or the police department’s. Unfortunately as it turned out, I was able to take advantage of that in defense of my client.”

  “Would you conduct the defense the same way if you had to do it over?” the anchorwoman asked.

  “If you’re asking if I’d defend Mr. Slocum in the same way knowing he was guilty, the answer is no. I would have done everything in my power to persuade him to accept a plea bargain.”

  “And if he had refused?” Ms. Stone asked.

  “I would have stepped down as his counsel,” she said.

  “Even though he’s entitled to the best defense available?” Ms. Stone persisted.

  Ashley nodded. “Yes. I have to live with my conscience. Besides, Boston has plenty of qualified criminal defense attorneys who could have handled his case, including others at my own firm.”

  “Very noble, now that you have the advantage of hindsight,” the anchorwoman said bitingly. “Will you stay with that firm?”

  Ashley was certain from the malicious glint in the woman’s eyes that she already knew the answer. “I believe some of you already know that I’ve quit.”

  “Why is that?” The question came from an unfamiliar reporter in the back of the room.

  “I no longer felt we were a good fit. I’m sure the partners agreed,” she said wryly. “But, of course, I wouldn’t dream of speaking for them.”

  “Even though they had no problem speaking for you?” Frank Lyman asked. “In fact, they seemed quite eager to jump into the spotlight.”

  Ashley had always found Frank’s biting wit a breath of fresh air. It was so again this morning. “Some people abhor a vacuum,” she commented. “And if there was one in this instance, I created it by running away. I’m sure they felt they had to fill the void.”

  “You’re being very gracious,” someone commented. “Don’t you feel as if they were capitalizing on a tragedy?”

  “I’ll leave it to you to interpret their motives.”

  Lynda Stone gave her another smirking look. “Any other firms in town made an offer to you?”

  Ashley refused to lose her cool. “None knew until this moment that I might be available, but thank you for giving me an opportunity to put the word out.” She smiled. “Unfortunately, though, my plan is to go into private practice elsewhere.”

  “Where?” the woman prodded. “New York? Washington?”

  Ashley saw what she was trying to do. Unless Ashley came up with some dream offer, anything else Ashley said would sound like a demotion of sorts, a step down. She gave her reply careful thought. She refused to let anyone think she was running away because she thought she couldn’t cut it in the big leagues anymore.

  “I’ve had a few weeks to sort out my priorities,” she began slowly. “I’ve found that not everything begins and ends in Boston. There are plenty of places in need of a lawyer with my skills and much satisfaction to be had in making sure that everyone has an equal shot at justice. I’ve also realized that there’s more to life than the law and I hope to have an announcement on that front in the very near future.”

  Determined to end the press conference on her own terms, she beamed directly at Lynda Stone. “Thanks so much for giving me this opportunity to speak out. I’m sure we’ll cross paths again.”

  She turned and walked away, this time with her shoulders back and her head held high. For the first time in weeks she felt as if she’d reclaimed her self-respect. As her parents and Jo came up to flank her, she realized it felt damn good.

  Now it was time to get back to Virginia and fight for the man she loved.

  Damn, but she was magnificent! Josh caught a snippet of Ashley’s press conference on the national news. The miscarriage of justice in the Tiny Slocum case had made the network newscast a few weeks back. Because the attorney involved had been all but invisible, he hadn’t realized at the time that it was Ashley. In fact, he hadn’t put it all together until she’d told him about the dilemma that had brought her to Rose Cottage. Now he had to give the network credit for following up with Ashley’s side of the story, albeit they gave her time for little more than a footnote compared to the length of the original segment.

  He had a hunch offers would pour in once the other major law firms in Boston caught wind of the fact that
a high-profile, talented lawyer was without a job. Any sensible firm would want such a class act with her incredible legal mind on staff. What would she do once they started dangling money and power in front of her? He wished he were convinced that she would choose Virginia, would choose him.

  He couldn’t sit around Idylwild waiting for her to come back, though. He’d go stir-crazy. He had decisions of his own to make, office space to lease, letterhead to be designed and printed. He had to go back to Richmond and put his condo on the market, pack up the few things that really mattered to him and sell the rest. None of that was contingent on Ashley’s return.

  But for some reason, he couldn’t make himself get started. He wanted to know if they were going to be a team. More than that, he needed to know if she’d for given him, if she was even remotely interested in marrying a man who had a hefty bank account and a professional job.

  He was still staring listlessly at the now-dark television screen when Mike appeared in the doorway. He’d gotten in the habit of strolling over whenever he was at loose ends. This visit had to mean that Melanie had taken Jessie somewhere for the day and left Mike to his own devices. It was almost pathetic how lost the man was without his wife and daughter. Josh was beginning to understand how he felt. He felt a little lost and vulnerable himself these days.

  “You look like hell,” Mike observed cheerfully.

  “It’s a good thing you’re not hoping to pursue a career as a motivational speaker,” Josh retorted.

  “Want to go out for a beer?”

  “No.”

  “Want to order a pizza?”

  “No.”

  “I’m sensing a pattern here,” Mike commented. “Are you up for company?”

  “Not really.” He regarded Mike speculatively. “I don’t suppose you know if or when Ashley’s coming back?”

  “Sorry. I’m not in the loop on that one. Melanie’s been walking around all grim-faced ever since that press conference on TV. She saw maybe ten seconds and concluded that the world is out to destroy her sister. I pity Lynda Stone if they ever cross paths. I’m not sure I realized my wife had such a vicious streak in her.”