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Her lashes lower, hiding whatever reaction I’ve just created. “Right,” she says, inhaling and exhaling as she looks at me again. “Right. Coming here was as stupid as me convincing myself that you weren’t the person you showed yourself to be the day we met.” And with that, she gets up and starts walking. And fuck.
Fuck. Fuck. I can’t let her go.
I push to my feet and follow her, my damn eyes on her hot little ass in that pink dress. She weaves through the crunch of bar bodies, and I step up my pace, catching up with her just inside the hotel lobby, grasping her arm. She whirls around, jerking out of my grip to face off with me. “I hope,” she bites out, her voice low, but fierce, “for the sake of your client, that the jury doesn’t judge your client the way you have me, without facts and evidence.”
I close the space she’s put between us. “I know what I heard.”
Her hands go to her hips, her stance that of challenge, not defense. “You know what you think you heard.”
“You said yourself that your publisher set the book deal up for you with Dan.”
“My publisher forced the meeting on me.”
“I might not know you well,” I bite out, “but I know you have enough money and freedom not to be forced into anything.”
“I inherited my apartment, and I don’t live on family money. I have goals. I have dreams, and, frankly, it costs me money, a lot of money, to dare to live those things.”
“And your goals and dreams, I assume at this point, include writing a book and making bank by screwing me over.”
“Do you think that I would rip on Dan’s handling of the case, and praise you, if I ever intended to have that meeting with him tonight? Let alone write a book with the man?”
“And yet you took the meeting, Cat,” I say, not even sure why I’m still standing here with her. Why I care how she answers, I don’t know, but I do.
“Laying groundwork for the moment I declined an offer made by my present-day publisher, which is much like you walking away from a client mid-trial. It’s a big deal. But you know what? I don’t even care about the book anymore. I just want the respect of my readers following this case through my eyes and thoughts. Which means I shouldn’t be standing here with you right now, probably making a scene. I hate scenes.” She walks away.
I catch her arm again and guide her deeper into the lobby, toward the security booth. “Where are we going?” she demands.
“Someplace where you avoid your scene and I get my answers,” I say, giving the security guard a nod, and turning us down a hallway toward the private elevators I know well.
“I’ll leave,” Cat says. “Then there is no scene to avoid. And I’ve told you everything I have to tell. Stop walking. Reese, damn it, stop walking. There’s no one in this hallway anyway.”
“Not yet,” I say. “Not until I get us out of the eyes of the courtroom crowd.”
“Let go of my arm.”
I stop at the elevator bank and hit the button. “I’m not letting you go,” I say, walking her to stand in front of me as I step into her. “Not yet,” I add, the warmth of her body radiating into mine. “You haven’t told me everything you have to tell.”
“Just because you haven’t heard anything to justify your attitude, it doesn’t mean that I haven’t told you everything.”
“Have you, Cat?”
“Have I what?”
“Told me the truth?”
“Yes,” she says. “I have.”
“Make me believe it.”
“I don’t have to make you believe anything,” she says, her voice a little lower, a little raspier. The air between us is thicker, harder to breathe in, but then all I want to inhale right now is her sweet floral scent.
“But you want to,” I say.
“Yes,” she dares to admit. “I do. And I hate that I do. I shouldn’t care, because you’re—”
“I’m not an arrogant asshole.”
She studies me a moment, and I can feel a subtle softening of her body, see a warming in her eyes as she says, “Make me believe it,” and with that statement, she lets me know that she’s in this with me. That she still wants her one and done.
