“You laid that on a little thick,” Martin said.
“I couldn’t resist. And it’s true—what business does he have running around trying to blame someone when everyone on the jury is probably scared out of their minds?”
The passion in her voice stunned him. It seemed like it had been years since he’d felt that strongly about anything. Maybe it had been.
If so, what a waste of all that time, living in a gray and muted world when he could have been in one shot through with care and conviction. With color.
Was it selfish to think that he already couldn’t stand to lose her?
You won’t lose her. She’s your mate.
Minute by minute, he believed that even more. Their chance was here and now and he was going to seize it and never let it go.
Chapter Three: Tiffani
I could get used to looking up at this man.
Chief Deputy Martin Powell was, as he himself had pointed out, tall. Tall and broad and hard-muscled in a way that made Tiffani think of blacksmiths and gladiators. He was handsome in a way that seeme
d to have no modern equivalent.
It was like he’d stepped out of an older and more magical time.
His salt-and-pepper hair was close-cropped, with just enough length to suggest that she would be able to get her hands into it. To get enough of a grip to pull him down to meet her...
She was forty-four years old—forty-five next month. She had too much going on in her life to be panting around her stepdaughter’s boyfriend’s boss like a swoony teenager.
But it wasn’t that he made her feel young. Not really. It was that he made her feel like herself. And made her like it,
What could be more dangerous in a man than that?
He didn’t make her worry about her hair or her waistline or whether or not the skin cream she was using had tightened up her pores. He didn’t look at her like he was seeing art that needed just a little bit more restoration before he’d be willing to buy it. He just—looked at her. A lot.
With an expression in his eyes that she had never seen before.
And he’d told off Judge McMillan, which was, not to put too fine a point on it, hot as hell. He’d taken responsibility and protected his people, both things her ex had never been able or willing to do.
She was on the verge of developing a crush when she noticed the wedding band on his finger.
Regret slid down to her heart, an ice cube chilling everything in its path.
No matter how he looked at her, no matter how much she liked him, she wasn’t making the mistake of becoming someone’s side-dish. She had suffered too much from Gordon’s affairs to play the mistress to another wife.
She tried to stop her smile from fading. It was one thing not to flirt, but it was another thing entirely to swerve into being cold. He hadn’t actually hit on her. He had just made her wish he would.
He still seemed to have caught some change in her expression.
“It must have scared you,” he said quietly. “Were you in the courtroom when the alarm went off?”
Right. The bomb threat. That was probably more important in the grand scheme of things than a little temporary romantic—and, okay, erotic—disappointment.
But she had liked thinking about him much more than she’d liked thinking about the possible danger. He was warm and the danger made her shiver. She wrapped her arms around herself despite the sticky mid-July heat and the sweat prickling under her sensible professional cardigan.
“Right, I was in the courtroom. The judge called a recess and asked me to his chambers. He wanted to tell me I was too inexperienced to do the job I’d been hired to do and that he’d be double-checking all my work for mistakes. Nice guy. I’d just gotten back to the courtroom when the sirens came on to tell us we were all doomed—so I guess they was just finishing what McMillan started. I’m kidding. I know it was probably just a prank.”
She had dealt with enough of those pranks in the aftermath of her ex-husband’s arrest. Of course, in that case, a bomb had gone off eventually...
But Martin seemed to know exactly what she wanted to hear.