“Well, then let me hit you where it hurts.” Martin smiled as widely as he could manage. “There’s no way in hell that this trial is going to stay in your courtroom, Your Honor. Not after this.”
And at last, the judge’s awful composure faltered.
So the trial of the century left Sterling after all. Good riddance.
Chapter Twenty: Tiffani
Tiffani had taken two showers since escaping the courtroom, and she still wasn’t sure she had washed off the punky, sour smell of fear. Maybe she had drowned it in lilac and mint, but it kept surfacing like a bitter reminder. She wrapped herself in a bathrobe and made a cup of tea.
Jillian had only just agreed to leave her alone. She’d wanted to stay with Tiffani until Martin was able to come, but Tiffani had at last persuaded her stepdaughter that she was fine. She hadn’t been hurt. She was only rattled, and all she needed to cure that was time.
Time and, she suspected, Martin’s arms around her. Jillian had taken the edge off her shakiness, but Martin would be the one to finish it.
In the meantime, she just had to hold herself together and try not to jump to any conclusions about why he still hadn’t shown up. She had known this afternoon would be a nightmare of work for him—he would need to coordinate the booking of both Tim and Bruce, manage his office’s response to the media blitz, and do a thousand other bits of paperwork. She knew that.
He was fine. Him not being here didn’t mean anything had happened to him, no matter how vividly she remembered him leaping on top of someone with a gun.
He was fine. She was fine.
She just wanted her boyfriend. She was pleased to discover that she was very okay with that. She had faced down an armed gunman—well, an armed gunkid—without flinching and she had refused to leave Martin’s side when he was in danger. If she wanted to spend the aftermath of that cuddling with him, she didn’t think that meant she was weak or silly. It just meant she was human.
Not a project. Just a person.
This time it wasn’t a mantra. It was just what she knew in her heart to be true.
Martin finally arrived at a quarter past seven. Tiffani could read the weariness in every line of his face.
She smiled, overwhelmingly glad to see him no matter how tired he was.
“Hi, honey. Hard day?”
“Do you know how many people came up to me asking me why I didn’t just let the kid shoot McMillan?”
“Did you tell them he didn’t have a real gun?”
“I did. Then they just asked why I didn’t loan him mine. Or let him bash McMillan over the head with your steno machine. I told them you’d never forgive me if anything happened to Felix.” He rubbed his eyes and then his whole expression softened. “You look beautiful.”
“Thank you. It’s the height of bathrobe chic.”
“No, really.” He wound a long, tumbled-down curl around his finger. “It’s like I closed my eyes and fell asleep and you’re my dream.”
“I thought it was my nightmare, seeing someone point a gun at you,” Tiffani said quietly. “So it’s the best thing in the world to me to see you here, alive, and know that I’m awake.”
She hugged him a long time just to really, truly convince herself that he was there and as solid as ever. Then she sent him off for a shower while she poured them both drinks.
Martin emerged a few minutes later, rubbing at his head with a towel.
Tiffani was simultaneously envious of the short showers men could succeed in taking and appalled that they considered getting clean the only purpose of a good, hot shower. She vowed to introduce Martin to various luxuries—baths, bath salts, oils, steam. Decadence. She wanted to spoil him.
His eyes warmed when he saw her. “What are you smiling about?”
“I’m thinking about the possibilities of you, me, and a nice luxurious bath.”
“That does sound like it’s worth smiling about. Oh, and so is this.” He picked up the glass and took a long drink. “Thank you.”
“I figured we could both use it after the day we’ve had. The day you had, especially, since I got to exercise the civilian privilege of going off somewhere to decompress.”
“The afternoon was long,” Martin admitted. “But I’ve needed this ever since you were in the same room with a loaded gun. What I thought was a loaded gun, anyway.”