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Fucking reporters, and that has to be her story. It’s the only thing that makes sense.
“I’ll be back in ten minutes,” I say to Elsa, already giving her my back and walking down the hallway.
I exit to the main corridor, happy as hell that the press has rules to follow that don’t include accosting me and security has a tight handle on the boundaries. Of course, some of them might decide that equates to a challenge, I think, with Cat in my mind. I scan the corridor and get lucky. I spy my little blonde game player headed down the hallway to my left. I don’t need encouragement to follow. I’m already making tracks in her direction, and when she turns right, I step up the pace. Her path leads me to a set of stairs, in a less-populated part of the courthouse. The sound of her footsteps leads me up the stairs, and I reach the top just in time to see her enter a room to my right.
I pursue her, and when I discover that room is a bathroom, I don’t care. This woman played me, and I don’t like to be played. She finds out now that it ends now. I follow her inside.
Chapter four
Reese
Ifind Cat standing at the sink, three open stalls behind her. She whirls around as I enter, her pretty pink painted lips that I wanted to kiss this very morning parting in shock. “You do know you’re in the bathroom, right?” she demands.
“Since the door said bathroom, yes. I know.” I close the space between us, and she doesn’t back away. She stands her ground, her hands settling on her curvy, but slender, hips. Her perfume flowery, roses, I think. Sweet, like I knew she would taste, right up until a few minutes ago.
“The sign says women,” she says, “not bathroom. Not men. And unless you have unexpected equipment, or you simply identify as a woman, and that’s what you’re telling me, you can’t be in here.”
“Good to know you understand limits,” I say. “Unfortunately, you don’t know how to use them in your job. And stalking the defense is not how you get a story.”
She glowers. “Stalking you? Last I heard, stalkers do the following. You were in line behind me when we met, not the opposite. And you were the one who cut in front of me. And, in case you didn’t notice, I’m well known in that coffee bar. I didn’t just show up there because you were there.”
“You mean my choice of coffee shop near the courthouse worked out for you.”
“I live right by it and I’m there all the freaking time, and we both know that you are not.”
“You expect me to believe that you didn’t know who I was?”
“Believe what you want,” she says, “but no. I did not know you were there. I didn’t even know who you were until opening statements.”
“Then you aren’t a well-prepared reporter.”
“Look here, Mr. Hotness,” she bites out, immediately adding, “Mr. Arrogant Asshole. Knowing who you are and knowing what you look like are not the same.”
I arch a brow at the irritating territory this has now entered. “And yet you know about Mr. Hotness?”
“Because Lauren Walker is my friend and she told me about your female following this morning. She also told me you hate that name, which may or may not be believable, since she also told me you were a nice guy.”
“I am a nice guy. When it’s deserved. How do you know Lauren?”
“How is that your business?” she challenges.
“You were talking about me with her.”
“The entire planet is talking about you right now, so no. That does not make anything about me or my conversations your business. And for the record, I wasn’t going to meet you this morning at all, which is why I was so late.”
“Why not?” I demand, that reply hitting me in all kinds of wrong ways. “You knew who I was by then, by your own admission.”
“Because I didn’t want some scandal to come out of it or for you to think I was going to get naked with you for an interview. I still need and want one, but not that way. And yet here you are. In the ladies’ room of the courthouse. Seriously? What are you thinking? You have reporters following you around.”
“Says a reporter following me around,” I counter.
“I’m not following you. That isn’t my style.”
“And yet you showed up this morning,” I say.
“I decided that I needed to tell you I was a reporter before you found out, but you left before I could. And I didn’t want to hurt your big-ass freaking ego by making you think I didn’t want to meet you.”
“Did you?” I ask.
