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He slowly rounded the desk until he was standing directly in front of her. “Well, because I don’t know how your father will react to my doing that.”
Marie looked suddenly ill at ease. He watched her elegant throat work around a swallow. “My father…um, will do what you say because you’re his attorney.”
“And you?” he asked, halting mere inches away from her.
He always forgot about how petite she was until he was standing close to her this way. Marie’s energy projected a much taller height than the five foot three that she was in her short heels. She was an intriguing mix of little girl and provocative woman. And right now he found himself wanting to get a glimpse again of those panties she had on.
“Ian?” she said half in question, half in warning.
“Hmm?”
He purposely allowed his gaze to travel leisurely over her tiny package. Oh, yeah, the ball had definitely just landed firmly in his court and he was going to hold on to it. Having Marie afraid of his next move, yet eager to see what it might be, was exactly the way he liked things between them. And while the last thing he should be thinking about was bedding his client’s daughter, just then Marie wasn’t Frank Sr.’s little girl, she was one-hundred-percent woman. More specifically, the woman he had seduced without really understanding why he’d done it beyond feeling the uncontrollable urge to do so.
And he was feeling that urge return to him tenfold.
“Ian?” Marie said more insistently.
Without even realizing he was doing so, Ian had backed her up until her bottom leaned against his glass desk. She held on to the blunted edge tightly with both hands and her small breasts moved with the sudden shortness of breath.
Ian realized he was having a little problem finding air himself. He eyed her mouth, but didn’t kiss her. Instead he skimmed his hand down over her slender hip then slowly inched the material of her skirt up. She caught his hand, her eyes searching his, but her hand neither stopping nor helping him. He smiled at her then continued moving his hand until those white undies were revealed.
Oh, there was no thong for Marie Bertelli. Instead her underwear was cotton and white and sexier than any scrap of silk and lace known to man. It clung to her womanhood like only cotton could. And made his mouth water with the urge to lower himself to his knees and press his lips against the swollen flesh just underneath.
And one look into her eyes told him she wanted it just as much as he did.
A buzzing sound filled the room. While inwardly Ian jumped, outwardly he stood still as a statue, his hand burning from the feel of her upper thigh on his palm, and her fingers on the back of his hand.
“Don’t you, um, think you should get that?” Marie asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
He could tell she was trying to play down her reaction, make him believe that his taking a peek at her underwear hadn’t affected her one way or another. But Ian knew Marie sexually better than anyone else on Earth. And even if she had been able to control her voice, he would have known she wanted him.
“It’s not mine,” he said quietly.
Marie blinked once, then again. “My wireless,” she said. Then her eyes widened. “My wireless! I’m waiting for a call telling me when the judge has reached his decision on my motion.”
Ian hated to remove his hand. Really hated to have to let her go. But Marie gave him little choice as she wriggled away from him and his desk and reached for her purse and the cell phone inside. She turned away to take the call, leaving Ian staring after her like a dumbstruck teen who had just gotten his first look at a naked woman.
Only he hadn’t seen naked. Not this time. He absently rubbed his chin as he listened to her speak. Actually, he’d never really gotten to see her naked. Not entirely. He’d seen her breasts. Caught glimpses of her tight bottom. But while he’d felt every inch of her, he’d never actually fully seen her.
And, in that one moment, he found he wanted that more than anything.
And knew that he wasn’t going to get it.
Marie clapped her phone closed and backed toward the door. “The, um, judge has made her decision. I’m due back in court in fifteen.”
Ian crossed his arms, doing what she had done minutes before—namely, trying to pretend he wasn’t affected one way or another by the news.
And he knew he was as successful as she’d been at hiding his true state. “You’d better get running then.”
Doubt and curiosity filled her eyes. “Yeah. I’d better get running.”
Ian cleared his throat. “So…I’ll see you tomorrow after the meeting?”
“The meeting? Oh, yes, the meeting.” She glanced at her watch. “Why don’t you give me a call when you’re done? Maybe we can meet somewhere afterward.”
“You don’t want to come here?”
He realized how loaded that question was when she glanced at him, then his desk and back again. “Um, I don’t think it’s a good idea.” She smiled at him. “Who knows what people might think?”
“Mmm,” he agreed.
She turned toward the door, then appeared to change her mind at the last minute as she paused.
Then she rushed him.
Ian was rendered completely speechless as she pressed him against the desk, then molded her mouth against his. She made a small sound in her throat as her tongue darted out, first outlining his lips as if it was something she’d been wanting to do all day, then dipping it between his lips. He groaned and reached for her, but she quickly stepped away.
He stared at her as she straightened her skirt and exited his office, closing the door with a soft click behind her.
For long moments he stood there, the edge of his desk against the back of his legs, wondering just what in the hell had happened. And wondering just how he could go about making it happen again. Then telling himself he shouldn’t let it happen at any point in the future, either near or far, if he had half a brain in his head.
He absently rubbed his chin.
Wow…
4
MONA LYNDELL BANGED THE carafe of coffee down onto the conference table, jolting Marie from her thoughts and nearly launching her straight from her chair.
Marie blinked at the firm’s usually mild-mannered secretary, surprised that the movement hadn’t been the accident she’d expected it to be. Rather the expression on Mona’s face as she stared—or rather glared—at firm senior partner Barry Lomax was enough to turn the hot coffee into ice cubes.
“Uh-oh,” Jena leaned closer to Marie and whispered. “Don’t look now but I think we’re witnessing a lovers’ quarrel.”
Marie’s eyebrows hiked high on her forehead. Lovers’ quarrel? What was Jena talking about? Mona had worked for Barry for nearly thirty years. Barry had been married three times, not once to his secretary. Her gaze moved from the couple in question, noting the way Mona appeared to seethe while Barry continued on outlining the partners’ cases and who was handling what and who needed an assist in other cases.
Mona left the conference room seeming to take all the tension with her.
Marie crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair, wondering when the entire world had stopped making sense.
The roomy conference room at the firm of Lomax, Ferris, McCade and Bertelli was airy and decorated with a real feel for the Albuquerque American Indian culture, just like the offices and waiting area. Usually the surroundings relaxed her. But as she looked at Barry Lomax—Dulcy’s mentor and friend who had invited the three of them to sign on with him to ensure his legal legacy when he retired—she suddenly felt like an entire subculture existed right under her nose without her knowing about it.
At the end of the table, Dulcy—five months pregnant and practically glowing with the happiness of her life—corrected Barry on one of her cases, while, next to Marie, Jena tapped her pen against her legal pad and glanced at her watch, no doubt anxious to get home to her ex-hockey player/doctor husband.
Truthfully, she hadn’t been able to concentrate on a whole lot since leaving Ian’s office earlier. And although three hours had passed since she’d planted a hot wet one on him, she swore she could still taste him on her lips.
She reached for the coffee with the intention of washing him off. But since chicken soup and a half of a sandwich at lunch hadn’t succeeded, she doubted this would work either. She raised the steaming black liquid to her lips. Maybe she could scald the taste away.
Barry sighed and sat back in his chair. “I think we’re done. Anyone have any new business to discuss?”
“Nope,” Jena said, closing her notepad. “I think that about covers it.”
“For me, too,” Dulcy said.
Marie sat forward and leaned her forearms against the table. “Actually, I have something.”
Three pairs of eyes focused on her, making her wish she hadn’t said anything.
“Well, it’s not something in the traditional sense of having something. It’s not a new case or anything…”
Jena elbowed her. “Get to the point, Bertelli.”
Marie grimaced at her and sighed. “I just thought that you all should know that the Treasury Department is questioning my father in connection with a racketeering charge.”
Dead silence. Marie could virtually hear her own heart beating as she waited for some sort of verbal response. And waited. And waited.
She cleared her throat. “The details are a little sketchy yet,” she said. “But I’m in contact with his attorney. Basically, all I know is that two days ago my father was pulled in for preliminary questioning at which time he contacted an attorney.”
“Not you,” Jena said quietly.
Marie looked down at the table where she was worrying her hands. She put her hands in her lap. “No.”
At the end of the table, Dulcy shifted in her chair, not an easy move given her ever widening girth. “Who did he retain?”
“Ian Kilborn.”
“Who?” Jena asked, leaning closer.
Marie stared at her. “Ian Kilborn.”
Jena stared at her as if she’d gone soft in the head, then looked at Dulcy who gave an odd sort of smile before averting her gaze and pretending an interest in the files in front of her.
“Who’s Ian Kilborn?” Barry asked.
Jena waved her hand. “We all grew up together in the same neighborhood. You wouldn’t know him from there, of course, but you might be familiar with him by the cases he’s represented lately.”
Dulcy nodded. “There’s Raphael Mendoza…”
“Serial robber who steals women’s intimate apparel,” Jena added.
Marie sank lower in her chair.
“That guy who killed his priest after he confessed to killing his wife,” Dulcy counted off on her fingers.
“Jamieson.”
“Yeah, that’s him.”
Jena lifted a finger. “Then there’s the Britney Hiawatha case.”
This lifted Barry’s snow-white brows, making him look more like James Brolin than Sean Connery. “The prostitute who…”
He didn’t need to finish, because the story made news due to the sheer gruesomeness of the details. Hiawatha had basically turned any johns who didn’t pay her into modern-day eunuchs.
And if Ian hadn’t gotten his clients off altogether, he’d gotten the prosecutors to cop to lesser charges after pulling a few courtroom stunts that had nearly gotten him disbarred.
“Oh, he’s good,” Barry said, shaking his head. “Very good. I’m surprised I didn’t recognize the name. Kilborn, right? Kill ’em Kilborn.”
Marie rubbed her forehead. It was bad enough that this was the man her father had hired. This was also the guy she fantasized about sleeping with while…well, while she was sleeping and had no control over where her thoughts ventured.
Good Lord.
“You and Kilborn grew up together?” Barry asked.
“In the same neighborhood,” Marie said. “We weren’t exactly…friends.”
She caught Jena giving Dulcy one of those “really?” faces she hated and felt the urge to elbow her friend so hard she’d fall backward in her chair.
“Oh,” Dulcy said.
But she hadn’t said it in the way Marie might have expected. Instead, she seemed surprised by something that didn’t have anything to do with the present conversation.
Marie looked at her. Dulcy’s face had gone white and she was clutching her stomach.
“Are you all right?” Marie asked, getting up from her chair and hurrying toward her friend.
Then Dulcy smiled, so brightly it nearly hurt to look at her. “I’m…fine. I just felt the baby kick.” She laughed. “I mean, at five months, I’ve felt him kick before, but not this insistently.” She rubbed her palms over her stomach. “Ezzie jokes that I’m going to have a horse. I’m beginning to think she may be right.”
Ezzie was Esmeralda, Dulcy and Quinn’s housekeeper, although she was more family than hired help, especially since she didn’t get paid. Marie got the heebies whenever she was around the old Indian woman because Ezzie looked at her as if trying to figure something out. Marie never stuck around long enough to find out what.
“That’s why I’m never having children,” Jena said, closing her notepad again. “I don’t want any little hellion kicking around inside of me for nine months.”
“They don’t kick until after the first trimester,” Dulcy corrected her.
Jena shrugged. “Six months, nine. Both too long.”
Dulcy took Marie’s hand and rested it against her round belly. As she always did when she touched her friend’s stomach, Marie wondered at how hard and solid the mass was. “Do you feel him?”
Marie did. She gasped and nearly drew her hand away at the force of the kick.
Barry chuckled as he got up and headed for the door. “I think that’s my cue to leave the room.”
Dulcy looked at him. “Don’t you dare, Bartholomew. You get over here and feel your honorary grandchild along with everyone else.”
Marie drew back from the group, watching as if from a distance. Her brother Frankie Jr.’s wife had had their two children while Marie was in L.A. Though she’d flown in for the births and the baptisms, she hadn’t actually experienced the pregnancies with her sister-in-law. To watch one of her best friends go through the experience…well, she felt humbled and awed. And maybe, just maybe, a little envious.
“It’s a girl,” Jena said confidently after shaking her hand as if she’d just touched a bagful of goo instead of her friend’s stomach. “I don’t know why you don’t want to find out what sex it is, Dulc. You keep calling it a ‘he.’ What if it is a girl?”
Dulcy gave a long, happy sigh. “I use ‘he’ just to keep things simple. Quinn and I would be very happy if it were a girl.” She tucked her hair behind her ear and went through the maneuvers required for her to stand. “But Ezzie’s adamant about my having a boy.”
