He had married Lisa. Sweet and shy, she had been easy to love. And as a deer shifter, she understood the situation they were in as well as he did. They weren’t meant to be with each other, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t be happy with each other.
And they had been. He had made her laugh and she had been a calm oasis for him in the middle of even the hardest and most wearying days. Even now, he couldn’t forgive the illness that had taken her from him so suddenly and with so little warning.
And he had been so sure that all the romance in his life had died with her. He had accepted that without any hesitation, especially at first. He’d been so stricken with grief that he had barely been able to remember how to microwave the casseroles friends had stacked in endless piles in his fridge. Back then, he hardly wanted another romance and wouldn’t have known what to do with one if he’d gotten it.
But lately, he had to admit that he had been feeling all the downsides of solitude. Before Lisa, he hadn’t known just how deeply he needed companionship, how much easier it was to sleep with someone’s head on the pillow next to him. It would have been enough—more than enough—to have found a love like that again, the love of deep friendship and slow, tender intimacy.
The way he loved Tiffani was already different. It wasn’t a greater love—he didn’t know that he could have borne the guilt of all at once loving his mate more than he had loved his wife—but it was a more intrinsically, instantly romantic one. It made him impulsive and fun and lighthearted in a way that he hadn’t been in years. He had gotten used to being the calm, fatherly center of his team, stable and sensible.
Now, for the first time in his life, he wanted to make mistakes.
He trusted her to make every one of those mistakes astonishingly worthwhile.
And so far it had worked. He had ducked away from the office for a lunch break in a hotel, and the world hadn’t ended, the sky hadn’t fallen. What other possibilities were there? How could he sweep her off her feet the way she deserved to be swept?
And when would this clerk stop making small talk with her and move on?
Sometimes humans could instinctively sense when shifters were irritated. Maybe this was one of those times, because the clerk broke away at last.
Tiffani now stood by herself in the middle of the hall, her glossy hair pinned up once more in its sensible bun, and something about the way she stood made her seem so closed-off.
It was how she had looked when she had buttoned up the long row of buttons on the side of her skirt. Even more than that, it was how she had looked when she had waved off his compliment about her being good in a crisis, saying all she had done was calm down a group of kids.
It was as if she felt she needed to make excuses for herself. But to whom?
“Tiffani?”
She turned to him and her smile was everything he had remembered it being. It wiped away any concern that she might not be as happy as he wanted her to be.
“Martin. It’s so good to see you.”
She was so warm and so effortlessly sincere—whatever lies she had told over the years must really have hurt her, because her automatic responses to him were so natural, so enthusiastic.
“It’s good to see you too.” He meant every word.
“I thought we were going to miss each other when McMillan didn’t reconvene the trial. And by the way, if you want to know, I can tell you all about McMillan’s reasons for not reconvening the trial today. And all about his reasons why this case belongs on his docket and why he’s the only person in the county who could hope to handle it. And also his opinion on dogs, for some reason.”
“Pro or anti?”
“Anti. Very anti-dog.”
No wonder McMillan didn’t like Colby.
“How does he think things will go moving forward?”
“As long as he’s in control, absolutely perfectly. Realistically, if you want my opinion—”
“I do,” Martin said, and was rewarded with another look at that perfect smile.
“Some part of him is relieved that a phone call is the only trouble we’ve had. He knows that if too much excitement gets stirred up around here, the trial might be moved somewhere else or they might have to dismiss this current jury and get a new one. Maybe a new judge, too. Presiding over the ‘trial of the century’ is a big feather in his cap and he doesn’t want to lose it. But at the same time...”
Martin resisted the urge to prompt her. She knew he was listening, and his silence reassured her of that better than any prod to go on would have done. The last thing he wanted was to seem impatient.
Especially since, he admitted wryly, he could have listened to her talk all day. About anything.
“At the same time,” Tiffani said, “he likes the attention. The bigger the trial gets, the bigger he seems for being the judge overseeing it. Until the balloon pops. So he’s as excited as he is angry.”
“Sounds like it might make for a tense place to work.”