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Aidan found his voice. “That’s the question of the hour.”
“Sit down.” She motioned abruptly at one of the other chairs.
“Ask me nicely first.” Aidan leaned one shoulder against the wall.
Her nostrils flared delicately. She stared at him as though she needed a moment to digest his words. Then she frowned. “Are you antagonizing me?”
“Maybe.”
“Why?”
Aidan approved of the response. She was direct. And it was a good question. Maybe it was the bedroom hair that made him feel cantankerous. He’d had enough of gorgeous women for a lifetime.
“I wasn’t the one who started this off by giving orders,” he pointed out.
Her jaw hardened. “Please, Mr. McKenna, won’t you have a seat?”
She rebounded well, too. “Thanks, I think I will.”
He pushed off the wall and went to the table. He pulled a chair out, turned it around, and straddled it. She picked up his paperwork again.
“Is this the part where you ask me if I did it?” Aidan wondered.
She glanced up at him. Purple, he thought, her eyes were a hue of purple, at least in this harsh fluorescent light. And damned if he didn’t find himself wondering what they looked like when they were heavily lidded with satisfaction or opaque with need.
He never learned.
“It doesn’t matter,” she answered.
That ticked him off. “Well, I didn’t. Do it, that is.”
“Of course not.”
He came out of the chair so suddenly he saw her recoil a little. He slammed it back into place at the table and went to the door.
“Where are you going?” she asked quickly.
“I think I’ll call another lawyer. One who believes me.”
“Wait!” Her voice went sharp without really rising.
Aidan reached the door and looked back at her.
“Let’s…” She licked her lip again. “Let’s start over,” she finished as though the words tasted bad.
He wagged a finger back and forth between them. “This? Us?”
“I’ve had a long day. Maybe I was too…” She faltered, seeming unable to finish.
“Condescending?” he offered. “Judgmental?”
Ah, there, he thought. There was heat in those eyes. They’d been cold and blank up until now, but something that reminded him of a solar flare hit them as he watched.
It was enough to make him go back to the table. He wanted to see how many other ways they could change, and how quickly. There was a lot going on in there beneath her surface disdain, not that he trusted an ounce of it.
This time when he pulled the chair out, he sat properly. “Go ahead. Start over.”
He sounded as if he was giving her permission, Grace thought. In a way, he was, and that galled her.
Her heart was still beating with a sick thudding rhythm against her chest wall. How would she explain to Lutz if she lost the guy in the initial interview? Her head was fogged. Her thoughts seemed to be swimming through muck. She was tired, she thought, just tired. It had nothing at all to do with the fact that he…well, he unbalanced her.
If she was reading him right, he didn’t like her. Most men never got to the point of deciding whether they did or not. They saw her and that was enough. They looked at her and they wanted her. Grace had learned a long time ago that she need not have a single redeemable quality. They’d trail after her like pups looking for their mama anyway.
He was watching her, waiting for something, she realized. “You…ah, want me to ask you if you’re innocent.”
He nodded.
Grace swallowed carefully. “Okay. Are you innocent?”
“Well, for one thing, I’m not Bran Downey.”
He didn’t actually answer this time, she noticed. She looked down at the papers in front of her. “Bran Downey shot a cab driver on the corner of Broad and Vine. Of course, he was aiming for his wife at the time.”
Aidan reached for the other guy’s paperwork. “Did she get away?”
Grace fought the urge to slap his hand away. “Who cares?” Had she just sounded shrill? Grace briefly covered her face with her hands. “It doesn’t matter. You’re not Bran Downey.”
“Nope. But she did. Get away, that is. Good for her.”
“Yes.”
“If I’m here, where’s Downey?”
“How the hell should I know?” God bless her, now he was making her swear!
“It just makes me wonder about this fine city I’ve vowed to protect and serve. I’m here for undisclosed reasons. Meanwhile, Downey is probably in Bimini by now. What’s wrong with this picture?”
Undisclosed? What did that mean? “I don’t know and I don’t care. I’m not representing Downey.”
“Lucky for him. You’re a little tense there, lady.”
He had no idea, Grace thought. Her first felony case had damned near dumped her within minutes of meeting her. He wasn’t the man whose paperwork she’d been given. He wouldn’t let her take charge.
And he was big and blond.
She finally looked at him, really looked at him. He had sea-green eyes that moved between candid and flinty. And it was quite possible that that was a dimple there on the lower part of his left jaw. It showed up when he flashed that quick, arrogant grin. Burly guys with rough jaws ought not to have dimples, she decided.
And why, pray tell, was she thinking about that when she was sitting here with the wrong guy’s paperwork?
“Hold on,” she said sharply, pushing to her feet. Grace left the room to find the guard.
She didn’t see him anywhere in the corridor so she headed for the intake area near the prison lobby. The guy sitting at the desk there was reading something. He glanced her way at the sharp rat-tat-tat of her high heels on the flooring, then he looked back at his magazine for approximately a second. His head jerked up again and he grinned.
This was the kind of reaction she had expected from Aidan McKenna. She had wondered many, many times in the past ten years if her father would really have sent her from Maruja and everything she held dear if he hadn’t worried about the soldiers noticing her and doing unspeakable things.
She reached the desk and pointed a manicured finger at a file there. “Is that the paperwork for everyone who was brought in today?”
“Yeah.” He picked the folder up eagerly.
“Could you look through it for Aidan McKenna’s correct forms? You gave me the wrong ones.”
He grinned crookedly. “Sorry. It got a little hectic around here earlier.”
There hadn’t been another soul at Intake when she’d arrived, Grace thought.
The guard looked through the folder. Then he looked again.
“Is there a problem?” she asked finally, sweetly.
“I got nothing in here for him. Sorry, Miss…uh…”
“Ms.,” she corrected. “Ms. Simkanian. Okay, thank you.”
She went back to the interrogation room and pushed through the door. “Did they take anything from you when they brought you in here?” she asked McKenna. “Your wallet, for instance?”
“Of course.”
“Good. Then let’s go. We’re leaving.”
“Lady, I hate to break this to you, but I really don’t think they’re going to let me walk out of here just because you tell me to.”
Grace almost smiled. “Not only were they tagging you as Bran Downey, they have nothing here for you personally. No papers means no charge. Captain Plattsmier mentioned something about extortion charges—that’s what my senior partner told me—but they don’t have the proper forms so they can’t legally hold you.”
“So that’s it. Extortion.”
“What did you think they were charging you with?”
“I had no idea.”
What kind of game was he playing? She started to point out that charges generally stemmed from whatever a suspect had done, but he was claiming his innocence—sort of—and that would be inching a little too close to the ground that had ticked him off earlier. “I’m sure they’ll chase their tails all night and have you in custody again by morning on the proper ID,” she said instead. “But for now you’re a free man.”
“Can I kiss you?”
Grace backed off fast enough to ram her spine against the doorjamb.
“Purely in gratitude,” he explained.
“None necessary. I’m just doing my job. Keep your mouth to yourself.”
She was rattled, he thought. Interesting.
Since he wouldn’t be spending tonight in a cell, maybe he’d keep her for an attorney after all. Of course, that would involve deciding just how he was going to deal with that jet-black hair and those Violet Eyes. And the legs. Miles of them, he thought, watching her.
They were nearly back at the desk before someone noticed him strolling down the corridor as free as a bird. Four more guards came running. They seemed to come out of the crevices between the bricks in the walls, appearing out of nowhere. They included the man who’d listened to him earlier, the guard who had been reasonable enough to bring him back to the first floor. Aidan was almost sorry for that. Almost, but not quite.
“What are you doing?” the guard yelled. “What is this?”
“Please bring this man his wallet,” Grace said pleasantly.
“Are you crazy?” he demanded.
“Not in the slightest. There’s an easy way to do this and a hard way. You can compare this man standing beside me with the face on his driver’s license or we can call in various members of the P.P.D. to identify him—as one Aidan McKenna. Correct?” She glanced at Aidan.
He nodded agreeably. “That’s me.”
The guard looked frantic. “Hold it, just hold it. I need to call Chief Baines. Or the arresting officers. Jeez.”
“By all means,” Grace agreed. “Call someone. Maybe they can get the proper paperwork here in the next few seconds before my client and I walk out the door. Perhaps then—with the proper paperwork—you’d have cause to detain him, because as it is you have nothing on the basis of which to hold him. You are not going to incarcerate him as Bran Downey because that, you see, is against the law.”
Guards went running. He loved her, Aidan thought.
“Come on,” she said to him in an undertone. “We’re out of here.”
He loved her less. “What about my wallet? I had damned near a hundred dollars in there.”
“You’ll be back here in the morning, I’m sure. In the meantime, they’re not allowed to spend it.”
“Where are we going?” he asked outside as she hailed a cab.
“To track down a man who might or might not begin to regret hiring me.”
It was difficult to tell if Dan Lutz was annoyed or impressed when they finally found him at Bistro Romano, a historic restaurant in Society Hill near South Street. The maître d’ was much easier to read. He was appalled by their gutsy intrusion.
“This way,” he said, his voice as stiff as a pair of new jeans.
“I’m not dressed for it,” McKenna replied.
“I know,” the maître d’ agreed.
The man pulled a little ahead of them as they crossed the dining room. McKenna leaned closer to her to speak in an undertone. “Must be your legs,” he murmured. “That’s why he let us in without a reservation.”
“Leave my legs out of this.”
“Let me make sure I have this straight. I’m not allowed to kiss you and your legs are not a fair topic of conversation. Is there any part of your body you don’t get defensive about?”
Grace stopped dead in her tracks. “How is that any of your business?”
“I’m curious.”
