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She nodded wordlessly, then as she stepped off the curb to go around her car, she glanced about and saw Elizabeth. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I guess your friend heard everything. Or is she a client?”
“Neither. Drive carefully now.”
He stood watching as she walked back to the BMW, got in and started it. He lifted a palm and waved her off, his face troubled. Finally, he turned where Elizabeth was waiting. “Sorry about that.”
She gave a small shrug and smiled sympathetically. “Looks like you’ll have your hands full for a while.”
“I’d like to keep this private, Elizabeth. My daughter seems to be going through a bad patch.”
“Certainly. Consider it forgotten.”
“Thanks.”
“You were saying that Gina dismissed Maude when you left. I can’t believe that.”
“See for yourself.” He looked beyond her as Austin’s Porsche pulled into a parking slot across the street from the coffee shop. Gina got out and even from this distance, Elizabeth could tell she was flushed and animated. At a signal from Austin, she waited for him to come around the car. He bent and said something in her ear. She nodded, not quite smiling, but she looked far less fragile than she’d been in the courtroom less than two hours ago. Tucking his hand beneath her elbow, they started across the street. There was no sign of Maude Kennedy.
“Hello,” Ryan murmured, watching them. “Looks as if they’re all made up.”
“Thanks to you,” Elizabeth said bitterly. “Once Austin got her alone, he would have wasted no time convincing her that they didn’t need anybody to help them work this out. So now he’s got a free hand to persuade her to anything he wants. Trust me, it won’t be to Gina’s advantage.”
Ryan looked down at her. “You really despise him, don’t you?”
“He’s a despicable human being.”
Both were silent as the couple approached. Gina’s smile, when she spotted them, was a little too bright. “Lizzie, I’m glad I caught you. Hi, Ryan. Are you two getting acquainted?”
“Mr. Paxton was just leaving,” Elizabeth said, then added coolly, “Hello, Austin.”
“Liz.” Austin’s pale eyes sliced over her.
“Austin and I are going to lunch, Liz. We’re going to talk this over ourselves, try to put something together without the…the lawyers.” She gave a quick, embarrassed half laugh. “No offense, Ryan. So, Liz, you needn’t wait around to give me a lift home as we’d planned.”
“What are you doing, Gina? You know why the judge directed you to work out an agreement with the help of your lawyers. These things are handled best with people who aren’t emotionally involved.” She gave Austin a quick glance, unmoved by the venom in his glare. She expected Austin to try an end run around the judge’s order, but why would Gina give him the opportunity after the abominable way he’d treated her? “If you go with Austin now, you give up any advantage you might have in negotiations. You know how he is, Gina.”
“Oh, Lizzie—”
“Yeah, Lizzie,” Austin said, with sarcasm, “however Gina decides to work this out is none of your business. And even if she wants advice from her lawyer, that’s Maude Kennedy, not you. So butt out. Now.”
Ignoring him, Elizabeth focused on Gina, but it was a struggle to keep the edge from her voice. “Does Maude know you’re going to handle this without her and does she approve, Gina?”
“She—she was a little reluctant, but—”
“C’mon, Gina. I’m ready for some fresh air.” With his arm around Gina’s waist, Austin’s razor-sharp smile included Ryan as well as Elizabeth. “That judge was so full of shit that it’ll take me and Gina a while to shovel through it and come up with a reasonable plan, but we can do it, can’t we, honey? And without the help of lawyers.”
He took a step or two, but stopped as another thought struck him. There was no smile on his face when he addressed Ryan. “Hey, Ryan, you’ll want to stick to criminal defense if your performance today is an example of what you can do in a civil suit. Luckily, Gina’s going to be reasonable about this and we’ll let you and that ball-buster who represented her know how it comes out.” Lifting his hand, he pushed Gina ahead a little more forcefully than she expected, but she quickly regained her balance and picked up her pace to match his as they headed toward the car.
“Seems in a hurry,” Ryan observed, watching as Gina was hustled into the Porsche.
“It’s necessary…before she changes her mind.”
Ryan shifted his briefcase to his left hand and urged Elizabeth into a walk. “I think I’ve just been dissed big-time,” he said dryly.
“I wouldn’t expect a bouquet of flowers tomorrow from your client if I were you,” Elizabeth said, still frowning at the Porsche that was peeling out into heavy traffic. But concern and disappointment were a thick knot in her throat. He’d done it again. He’d smiled and mouthed a few smarmy words and Gina had caved, just as she and Louie had feared.
“All I need now,” she said mostly to herself, “is to get back home and find a message that she’s decided to go back and live with him again.” She was barely aware that it was Austin’s lawyer beside her.
“I don’t think that’ll happen.”
“Oh, it could. She’s done it many times.”
“It might be difficult this time. Three’s a crowd and I’m not counting Jesse.”
She gave him a quick glance. “He has another woman already?”
He shrugged. “He hasn’t admitted it. I’m just repeating gossip.”
“Isn’t that a breach of ethics? The man’s your client.”
“As I said, it’s only gossip. Besides, Austin’s parting salvo makes me think he’ll be looking for fresh representation soon.”
She would have laughed, but she was simply too disheartened. “It won’t matter. He’s in damage control mode and we’ll only know how much damage he’s controlled when Gina gets home tonight.”
“I thought they were just having lunch,” Ryan said.
“Oh, they’ll have lunch all right…and then he’ll persuade her to spend the afternoon with him to give him more opportunity to get her to rethink her attitude. Then he’ll treat her to dinner in a great restaurant. It’ll be expensive and romantic, a place to remind her of all the perks that come from sleeping with the enemy.”
As they neared her car, Elizabeth fished her keys out of her purse and chirped the remote to unlock it. But before she climbed inside, Ryan stopped her.
“May I ask you a personal question?”
“Ask anything you want, but I certainly don’t promise to answer.”
“It’s about your friendship with Gina. Anyone can see that the two of you are nothing alike. From what I learned about her after I took on the case, Gina’s made some really bad choices. Granted, Austin’s not a very reliable source, but on the stand yesterday you said the two of you have been together as foster kids since you were five years old. Tell me, why is her personal life a wreck and yours almost the exact opposite?”
“Almost?”
“Well, nobody’s perfect. So, unless you’re going to tell me something bad, my comment stands. And my question.”
“I’m not going to tell you anything, Mr. Paxton. My personal life is just that, personal. And private.” She got into the car, but he caught the door before she could close it. “What?” she demanded. Both hands on the wheel, she looked straight ahead.
“You have a reputation for avoiding publicity, for reclusiveness. Don’t you know that the more mysterious you seem, the more intriguing you are to your fans? Avoiding them just adds to your mystery. Throw a few scraps out there and they’ll back off. And it’s Ryan, not Mr. Paxton.”
“Reporters don’t want scraps, they’re hunting red meat. I have a right to avoid anyone prying into my life. Thanks for the advice, but no thanks.” She put the keys into the ignition and started the car. Getting on a first name basis with Ryan Paxton was another thing she wanted to avoid. “And my fans won’t care—because they’re children.”
“How do you communicate with them, other than your books, of course? By e-mail on the Internet? Letters? What?”
“Letters mostly.” She could just drive off, but he’d unknowingly touched on something she was not reluctant to share. “And I answer them all, each and every one.” Her fan mail came from children, innocents who wrote from the heart. Elizabeth understood that need to communicate. She knew how it felt to write a letter when you still believed there was someone out there who would listen. And she knew how it felt to wait expectantly for a reply that never came.
“Kids send you letters,” he said, considering that with a half smile. “You must get some real cute stuff.”
She thought of the eight-year-old whose letter lay even now waiting for a reply in her in basket. The child’s younger sister needed a heart transplant. Would Elizabeth please tell the child’s parents that she would like to give her sister “half of her heart?” “Sometimes they aren’t very cute.”
He still blocked her leaving, standing with his weight on one hip, his left hand resting on the door frame of her car. She didn’t wait to hear what else he had to say about her career or her personality drawbacks. Instead, she reached for the handle of the door, forcing him to move back, and closed it smartly. “Goodbye, Mr. Paxton,” she muttered to his receding outline in her rearview mirror.
Ryan stood for a minute watching Elizabeth drive away. Okay, he’d satisfied his curiosity. He’d had a conversation with her out of the courtroom. Away from her pal and soul mate, Gina. He hadn’t made up the reason for seeking her out, not exactly. He knew, if left to his own devious devices, Austin would chew Gina up and spit her out, sans any financial settlement, no matter what the court decreed. And just to ease his conscience, he was going to give Curtiss Leggett an earful about his prick of a son. He might not be as black as the two women had painted him, but he wasn’t a boy scout either. So, Ryan’s motive in talking to Liz was honorable. Sort of. He also wanted to talk, one on one, with the daughter of the man who was responsible for John Paxton’s death.
He’d watched her for a few minutes at the coffee bar before approaching her. She was easy on the eyes, as gorgeous in person as her press photo. In fact, he’d had a hard time keeping his thoughts in line when he had her on the stand in the courtroom. He admired her loyalty, too. She was as fierce as a mama tiger defending Gina. Or possibly, it was the little girl, Jesse, who stirred the fires in her breast. Beautiful breasts. He’d had no trouble imagining the feel of them in his hands as he stood talking to her, even in that severe suit with the starched blouse underneath. But he didn’t intend to get caught up in any sexual fantasies about Elizabeth Walker. He had other, more compelling reasons for getting to know her better.
Her old man was dead, killed in a house fire just a day or two after his dad’s suicide. That much was public knowledge. But information beyond that about Judge Matthew Walker was extremely hard to come by. Maybe Elizabeth was a possible source. She’d been only five when he died, but she probably had his papers, his files, a record of the cases he’d been involved in at the time of his death. If she hadn’t destroyed them. Being a foster kid, her possessions might have been lost as she’d been palmed off to one anonymous family after another.
He felt a pang of sympathy, but for only a moment before shutting it off. Unlike Elizabeth, he’d had both parents until he was fifteen, two-thirds longer than she’d had anybody. Tough luck, but she’d managed. Pretty damned good, too. He admired her accomplishments. No, he wouldn’t waste sympathy on somebody who clearly didn’t need it.
Six
“Have you got a minute, Curtiss?”
Curtiss Leggett looked up from a seemingly vacant perusal of Houston’s skyline and motioned Ryan into his office. He swiveled in his chair so that he faced forward as Ryan quietly pulled the door closed behind them, ensuring privacy. “How’d it go?”
“Hetherington awarded joint custody to Austin and Gina. They’re to share holidays and vacations. They’re to work out an amicable plan together.”
Leggett grunted. “What about child support, palimony?”
“Her request was modest. Hetherington doubled it. Austin’s hit for about four thousand a month unless the two of them can come to an agreement for less.” Ryan frowned. “I thought he would have called you by now.”
Leggett’s laugh was brief and without humor. “He knows better than to bring up the subject of that woman with me. He should never have moved in with her. I know it’s the thing to live together now, but wouldn’t you think he’d choose someone of his own class? She’s trailer trash, that’s an apt description. I’ve been after him for years to send her packing.” He drew a disgusted breath. “I never could understand what he saw in her.”
“What about Jesse?”
Leggett turned his face, avoiding Ryan’s gaze. “Another mistake. Why the hell he didn’t make her abort is another mystery to me.” Shaking his head with more disgust, he said, “The whole thing has been distasteful to me from the beginning. I’m just glad to see the end of it. Of course, I’ll talk to Hetherington about reducing the money. Four thousand’s ridiculous. What does she expect, to be kept in the style of a real ex-wife? You’ve got to have a marriage for that. Steering clear of matrimony was Austin’s only smart decision.”
Ryan felt himself doing a slow burn. He’d felt no particular affection for Gina D’Angelo while representing her ex-lover, but she seemed a decent person. She’d made some bad choices in her life, but, hell, didn’t everybody once in a while? But she wasn’t trailer trash and she didn’t deserve the treatment Leggett father and son would no doubt cook up for her.
“Something else emerged during the hearing,” he said, wishing hard that he was on the golf course. He found he couldn’t sit down. He was too close to telling this bigoted old fart where to get off. “I know you were concerned about the firm’s reputation and any scandal that might grow out of the hearing…or out of Austin’s involvement with Gina.” He paused, giving Leggett a chance to be reminded that it wasn’t only Gina who was to blame for the situation. “There is some exposure, I think.”
Leggett was in the act of reaching for an elaborate humidor where he kept his stash of Cuban cigars. He stopped now, giving Ryan a keen look. “In what way?”
“Gina and her character witness, Elizabeth Walker, made some serious accusations about Austin. Do you have any knowledge of abuse in their relationship?”
“Abuse? Not sexual? Nothing about the little girl, eh?” He barked the questions out, like bullets.
“No.” Jesus, why would he even think that? Ryan watched him lift the lid of the humidor and select a cigar, taking his time. Did he know what was coming next? “They claimed Austin was often physically abusive, that he made a habit of beating up on her. That he had an ungovernable temper and when it went out of control, Gina was the victim.”
“Preposterous.” Leggett busied himself preparing his cigar. Looking at it, not Ryan, he meticulously clipped the end, moistened it by rolling it round and round in his mouth, then he picked up a sterling silver lighter. Now, holding the cigar in his teeth, he put the flame to it and puffed energetically until the immediate area around his head and shoulders was thick with smoke. Only then did he look up at Ryan, his eyes squinting against the acrid cloud. “What kind of evidence did they have for that?”
What kind of question was that? Ryan wanted to shoot the words back at him. It was as if Leggett accepted it for the truth, but lawyerlike was seeking a way out. “They didn’t produce any evidence,” Ryan told him. “That was the reason the judge went with the joint custody thing. If they’d had a hospital report or a police report, or if they managed to come up with an actual eye witness when Austin did what they claimed, it would have been much worse for him. As it is, only Elizabeth Walker, Gina’s friend and godmother to Jesse, claims to have seen bruises. She was a sort of way station when Gina would go into seclusion.”
“Bullshit.”
“Maybe.” Ryan was beginning to have grave doubts about the character of his client. “But if Austin’s smart—and there is some grain of truth to what both women claim—he’ll need to be very careful around Gina and his daughter in the future. It wasn’t a closed hearing, Curtiss. There were some students there, law school types from Rice, I think. And the usual courtroom junkies that hang around just to watch the legal system in play. But hear this. The person who really concerns me is Lindsay Blackstone, a television personality at WBYH-TV. She heard everything. My paralegal tells me that there was a series on her show last year about the escalating violence against women from husbands and lovers. I just hope she wasn’t there doing more research for a follow-up. I don’t think so, as there was no camera, but you never can tell.”
“Goddamn it!” Leggett rose abruptly from his chair, his frown thunderous. “Why didn’t you see to it the hearing was closed, Paxton? That’s why I chose you to handle this…mess.”
“If I’d suspected what Austin was going to be accused of, I would have,” Ryan said in an even tone. Did he have to remind the old coot that he’d walked into this case blind? And whose fault was that? The first rule in defense was to come clean with your lawyer.
Leggett grunted and puffed furiously on his cigar while he thought. He then gave Ryan a sharp look. “You think anything’ll come of it?”
“Only if Austin gets stupid and hits her again.”
Ryan was out of Leggett’s office and on his way to his car when he realized what he’d revealed in his parting remark to Austin’s old man. Leggett clearly was unsurprised to hear that his son was accused of beating up on a woman. That was disgusting enough, but what was just as disgusting was the absence of any shock and sympathy on Leggett’s part for the victim. The whole thing left a bad taste in Ryan’s mouth. He wished he’d never gotten involved.
Seven
Austin lifted his wineglass and smiled into Gina’s eyes. “To peace and harmony,” he said, his voice low and sexy. “To a better understanding, and especially to a history that can’t be wiped out by asshole lawyers.”
“Present company excluded, I assume,” Gina said dryly.
He touched her glass to his and grinned wickedly. “Damn right.”
Gina tasted the pinot grigio and found it fragrant and light. At one time she would have enjoyed it, as well as the hushed, intimate atmosphere of the restaurant. Anthony’s was pricey and the place to see and be seen in Houston, but considering that they’d spent the past two days in a bitter court fight, Austin’s motive in bringing her here was pretty obvious. She should have asked him to take her home after lunch, but he’d suggested they take in the new exhibit at the museum and then they’d stopped at happy hour at a bar he liked. And now…
When the menus were placed before them, he set his glass down and rubbed his hands together. “So, let’s see what’s wonderful tonight. I’ve heard the tomato tower is great. Let’s try it. What do you say?”
She ordered without much enthusiasm and sat back to wait for the meal while Austin chatted with ease about everything except the one subject that they should discuss. “So how’s your job search coming?” he asked as soon as their salads were served.
“I’ve had a couple of interviews.” She toyed with the garden greens. “I think I would have been hired by a small firm last week, but the personnel manager was spooked by the circumstances of my leaving LJ and B.”
“Not a problem.” He poured more wine for both of them. “Have them call me. I’ll give you a recommendation that won’t quit.” He lifted his glass. “Cheers, babe.”
“It’s too late, Austin. I needed the recommendation before they notified me that someone else had been selected.” Since that had been before the hearing, she didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to understand why there’d been blank silence from Austin.
“It’s their loss, sweetheart.” He reached over and touched her cheek. “Next time.”
In spite of her suspicions, she felt a quick, familiar warmth as his hand lingered, cradling her face. Austin in this mood was dangerously seductive. And the emotion he kindled wasn’t from the wine. No, it stemmed from some deep need in herself that Austin had always been skillful in tapping. Struggling to resist it, she glanced at her watch. “I really need to get back, Austin. Liz will be wondering what happened to me.”
The easy charm disappeared at the mention of Liz’s name. He dropped his hand and his voice went flat. “Liz knows you’re with me. Forget her.” He lifted his wineglass, but found it empty and set it down with a hard thump. Refilling his glass almost emptied the bottle. Looking about with irritation, he located the waiter and with a curt gesture ordered another.
“Austin, I’m serious.” Gina covered her glass with one hand. More wine would undermine her ability to resist him. “It’s not just Liz I’m concerned about, it’s Jesse.”
“She’s asleep, for Christ sake! Or she damn well should be at this hour.”
“She is, because Liz is so conscientious about everything to do with Jesse. But I’m responsible for her even so. I hadn’t planned on having dinner with you this evening. What if Liz had plans of her own?”
“She never has plans. She’s a goddamned recluse!”
“You make her sound weird or…or antisocial, or something. She isn’t any of that. She’s the best kind of friend a person could have, especially to Jesse and me. I honestly don’t know what I’d do without her.”
“We probably wouldn’t be in this mess without her,” he said in a biting tone, then added, “And don’t forget good ol’ Louie.”
