“From what I’ve heard, Judge McMillan’s courtroom is always a tense place to work.” She shrugged. “I can handle it.”
There was a firm set to her jaw when she said those words, like she was making a promise to herself. He had seen her competence in action and took it for granted that she could do anything she wanted—she had grit enough to get through any number of setbacks. But she was still learning that about herself.
For a long time, even if Tiffani Marcus had suspected she was something more than a trophy wife, there hadn’t been too many opportunities for life to prove her right. Now there were.
Martin knew that feeling better than he wanted to admit. He was in the same situation, more or less.
As long as you didn’t have a mate, you could tell yourself that you would be perfect if only the perfect opportunity presented itself. Presented herself. Maybe an ordinary marriage would do something to reassure you of that even if the circumstances were so different.
And maybe then you’d suddenly, out of nowhere, have the opportunity to fail spectacularly, in a way that would ruin your life and your own opinion of yourself.
No wonder he was so desperate to tell himself that Tiffani was as ready for all this as he was. He was terrified of messing up his last, best chance at happiness. He needed to get this—he needed to get her—absolutely right.
Or else the balloon would burst.
Chapter Seven: Tiffani
This still qualifies as slow, Tiffani told herself when Martin took her out for dinner on the same day he had first taken her out for lunch. This still qualifies as an acceptable level of decadence.
Midway through dinner, she had to admit that with Martin involved, a cup of bailiff coffee in the hall of the courthouse would have been too decadent to be safe or slow.
And with Martin, she would excuse any level of real self-indulgence as totally adult, responsible, and non-distracting just to have the chance to keep on indulging. She could have been naked and hanging upside-down from a chandelier while Martin hand-fed her chocolate strawberries, and she would have been saying, I’ll be able to box this away and go to work in the morning no problem.
But, well, there weren’t any chandeliers involved yet. So maybe she could still take the chance.
Besides, from everything Theo had ever told her, Martin was a responsible, even-keeled kind of guy. He would need to be up bright and early the next day too. He would need to be able to keep his mind on the job.
It was strange to feel like she was taking a risk at the same time as she was also trusting someone else to catch her. The last time she’d been big into risk-taking, she’d been young enough to be dumb about it. She had been so sure there would be some imaginary net beneath her. Something to stop her from making any truly bad calls.
She had gone on thinking that right up until Gordon’s first mistress had popped out of the woodwork. And then she had believed his apologies and his promises to change... and then mistress number two had come along. That time he hadn’t even tried to convince her he was sorry.
And down she had fallen, right off the tightrope she’d walked for so many years.
Was it ridiculous to think Martin wouldn’t let her fall? Maybe you couldn’t have a safety net in life, but you could have a partner. Life wouldn’t protect you—but a person could still grab your hand and hold you up.
Or maybe she would have rationalized anything for the sake of a man who made love like he thought it was love and who thought it was totally fine for her to want to eat bread.
Still, she made a token attempt to be Responsible Tiffani. She capped it at two glasses of wine.
Like wine was what she was in danger of getting drunk on.
She found a stray thread on the tablecloth and moved it back and forth with one fingertip. “What made you want to become a Marshal?”
Martin actually looked embarrassed. “Promi
se you won’t laugh.”
Tiffani crossed her heart. “I have no sense of humor whatsoever. I’ve never laughed in my entire life.”
“That smile of yours makes that a little unconvincing.”
“Smiling isn’t laughing,” she pointed out. “Spill. I want to know even more now. Embarrassing answers are always better than things like ‘it had good benefits’ or ‘my dad did it.’”
“Well, it does have good benefits, but my dad didn’t do it, for what it’s worth. He was an antiquities dealer.”
“Antiquities?”
“Like regular antiques but even older. Things from the Roman Empire, Ancient Egypt, Classical Greece, that kind of thing.”