Deadly Pursuit Read online

  Jerk.

  Standing over at the grill on the other side of the long counter, flipping burgers or whatever it was he did, he had his white-T-shirt-clad, broad-shouldered back to her. This, fortunately, spared her from his cool-eyed disdain, but unfortunately treated her to an unimpeded view of the world’s greatest ass, which was encased in faded, baggy jeans but still clearly tight and round.

  Her face flamed. She looked away, irritated with her surging hormones.

  That ass and that man, whoever the hell he was, had ruined the Twelfth Street Diner for her and, along with it, her trial rituals.

  In the old days, she’d finish up after a long session at court and bring her laptop here to her favorite booth, where the hanging lamp over the table provided a soothing light, and the view of the arbor in the park across the street was more relaxing than watching the Travel Channel at home.

  She’d order the pork chops and work late into the night, the comings and goings of the other regulars keeping her from the absolute loneliness she felt within the four walls of her house. She’d been well fed, content and as relaxed as a criminal defense attorney ever got.

  All that had changed three months ago when he showed up.

  Realizing she’d lapsed into staring again, Amara looked away, cleared her throat and tried to focus.

  Katie O’Farrell, who was a friendly acquaintance even if she was Amara’s current courtroom enemy, lowered her cup and clanked it on the table with unmistakable irritation. “You can’t seriously believe I’m wasting your time. The jury’s not with you. You should be glad to hear my offer.”

  “Oh, please.”

  “In case you didn’t notice, you didn’t make any dents in Detective Curtis today.”

  Amara had noticed, but she hid her scowl. Detective Curtis had emerged from her withering cross-examination smelling like a June rose, yeah, that was true.

  It was also true that the we hate you and the horse you rode in on vibe from the jury didn’t bode well for her client, Greg Kinney, accused low-level drug dealer and fumbling college student in his spare time. Poor dumb Greg stood better than a fair chance of spending some quality time in the pen, where he probably belonged.

  Luckily for Greg, though, he had a U.S. senator for a father, and Daddy Dearest had enough money and sense to hire a good lawyer. Enter Amara.

  She wasn’t about to let Greg go down without a fight, no matter how stupid he was.

  “Excuse me?” Amara slipped into full battle mode, her excess adrenaline fueling her outrage. “I’m supposed to have my client plead guilty and pack his bag for prison on the basis of your little hunch about which side the jury’s on? Is this a joke?”

  Katie shrugged. “Your client’ll never get two years from the judge if he’s convicted, and you know it. This is a decent deal.”

  Maybe. Probably. But Amara hadn’t given up yet, nor would she. Tomorrow she’d deliver a closing argument to rival Clarence Darrow’s in the Scopes Monkey Trial. Then she’d let the jury decide.

  “We’re not pleading out.”

  Katie, practically snarling now, put her elbows on the table and leaned in. “Are you holding out for one year? Is that what this is about? Because—”

  “I’m not holding out for anything.”

  “—I’m not recommending one year. I know how you operate, Amara—”

  “I’m not operating.”

  “—so don’t even try it.”

  “I’m not trying anything.”

  Amara didn’t bother trying to keep the annoyance out of her voice. What’d a person have to do to be left alone around here? Why couldn’t she eat and work without harassment? “I don’t want a deal of any kind, I’m not holding out for a year, and I am not done with my noodles.”

  A thick, muscular, brown arm had reached down to take her bowl, and Amara spoke without thinking. Her unnecessarily harsh tone registered with her brain a millisecond before the regret did, but by then it was too late.

  Oh, God, it was him.

  Flushing hot enough to ignite her own eyebrows, she slowly glanced up. Towering over her stood six and a half feet of masculine perfection and irritation, a man so unspeakably virile he’d make Zena and her band of Amazons look like petite-size zeros.

  Thunderstruck, Amara stared like an idiot, her mouth hanging open.

  This was the closest she’d ever been to him and she almost needed a shield or lead blanket to deflect some of his unholy chemical effect on her. Things had been bad enough from a distance, but now she could smell him, too, and oh, what a thrill that was. Sandalwood, spices and the fresh, healthy musk of a man who spent hours over steamy pots and pans. Just his scent alone was enough to peak her nipples and get the honey flowing between her thighs, but she still had to assimilate the face and the body.

  Like that was possible.

  The body was something she’d fantasize about for years to come. A pristine white T-shirt—how did he keep it so white, working in a kitchen?—stretched across broad, square shoulders and a rippling slab of chest and abdomen. One of those starchy chef’s aprons, the kind Martha Stewart wore, had been folded down and tied around his narrow hips.

  He had light brown skin and haywire curls the same sandy color. The brows, though, were dark and moody. So were the flashing eyes, which right now were expressing something fierce, like his fierce desire to dump the bowl of noodles on her head.

  His five o’clock shadow had gone to seed a week or so ago, but that only added to his attractiveness, his air of surly attitude teetering on the edge of outright menace.

  Looking at him gave Amara the kind of violent visceral response she’d never in her life had for anyone else. She wanted him. Had fantasized about his tongue in her mouth and her legs around his waist. Would love to have his scent and stubble marks all over her skin. Needed the slow, deep thrust of his body inside hers.

  And then she needed it again. And again.

  If he smiled or crooked his finger at her, she, Amara Clarke—defense attorney extraordinaire and fiercely independent woman who prided herself on never needing anyone, didn’t believe in casual sex and hadn’t had a date in three years or sex in four—would probably follow him into the back room, or the bathroom, or his car, or the nearest hotel, and let him do whatever he damn well wanted to do with her.

  Yeah, she wanted him that much.

  Their gazes locked and the cook looked her in the eye for only the second or third time ever. His dark brown gaze, so frigid it would no doubt cure the global warming problem if only someone would provide his transport to the Arctic, raked over her face and, in those fleeting milliseconds, one thing was perfectly, brutally clear:

  He hated her.

  He believed she was a snotty bitch who thought he was a peon well beneath her notice, and he despised her for it. There was no aspect of her that he liked; probably even the buttons down the front of her dress offended him. She had no hope of redemption against such absolute loathing, no possibility of him ever finding anything whatsoever worthwhile about her.

  So it was no surprise when he slammed her precious bowl back on the table, turned his broad back on Amara and spoke to Katie.

  “Who’s the chocolate bunny?” He jerked his head in Amara’s direction. “You should teach her some manners.”

  Oh, man. He was blessed with a naturally low, deep and sexy voice, the kind of voice that would keep a woman up all night with a vibrator in one hand and the receiver in the other if he worked for one of those phone sex hotlines.

  Katie didn’t miss a beat, smiling up at him with Nancy Reagan-esque adoration. “Amara can’t be taught. But I’m happy to be your bunny if you, you know, need one in vanilla.”

  He grinned at Katie, and Amara seethed with something ugly, almost like jealousy, but then his words registered with her brain. That was a compliment, right? Chocolate bunny? It was also a condescending endearment offensive to anyone with a pair of ovaries, and of course she hated it on principle, but … did that mean she’d caught
his eye?

  “Where’s Judy?” Katie wondered, referring to their waitress.

  “Went home sick,” Jack told her, still favoring her with the brilliance of his smile.

  Amara tried to recapture his attention. “I—I’m sorry.”

  He glanced over at Amara, his jaw tightening.

  “I just … I’m really hungry and the noodles are really good, so—”

  The irritation vanished and he faced her, one corner of his incredible mouth creeping up into the wicked half smile of a man with one thing on his mind, and it wasn’t food. To her utter astonishment, he gave her a pointed and assessing once-over, nearly searing the bodice of her dress off her body with the intensity of his gaze.

  That look was about the rudest thing she’d ever experienced in her life.

  It was also the sexiest.

  “Why didn’t you say so, Bunny?” he murmured. “I made the noodles. And I’m happy to let you taste anything of mine whenever you want.”

  If there was the teeniest doubt in her mind that he was trying to be as obnoxious and insulting as possible, the tiny wink he gave her cleared it up. Amara gaped at him, stammering. Her skin felt so hot it had to be purple by now.

  Turning to Katie, who was also drop-jawed, the cook flashed a pleasant, dimple-revealing smile, the kind he sprinkled liberally on everyone else in the universe, but never Amara. “More coffee, Katie?”

  Wait a minute.

  Amara’s belated outrage finally kicked in and, fuming, she eyed her own glass, which held only a couple of melted ice cubes and the sad dregs of a Diet Coke. How come his over-the-top nasty talk had her all hot and bothered? And how about a refill on her drink?

  “Umm … yeah.” Katie simpered under his attention until Amara wondered if she wouldn’t slither onto the table and undress in an impromptu striptease for his special benefit. The killer prosecutor turned to vanilla pudding right before Amara’s disbelieving eyes. “More coffee’d be great.”

  “How’s the trial going?” The cook kept his back firmly turned on Amara and refilled Katie’s cup from his steaming carafe. “Another conviction, you think?”

  Katie seemed to recover some of her composure, which was more than Amara could do. “Absolutely. Unless I can get Amara to plead out.”

  Royally pissed off and telling herself it had nothing to do with being crudely propositioned by the world’s haughtiest cook or jealousy over his attention to Katie, Amara let her quick temper get the better of her.

  “I’m not pleading out,” she told Katie, and then glared up at the cook. “I need another Diet Coke, if you can stop flirting with customers long enough to do your job. And my name’s not Bunny.”

  Oh, God. There was that look again, that flash of mischief that dried out her mouth and sent shivers chasing over her skin.

  “No problem, Sugar. Just let me know what you want me to call you, and I’m there.” With that, he strode back to the kitchen, leaving the women to admire his ass as he went.

  “Oh, my God,” Katie breathed. “He wants you.”

  Amara clenched her hands in her lap to stop the embarrassing tremble of her fingers. To think she’d been attracted to that jerk. Hah. He’d cured her of that, hadn’t he?

  And yet …

  She felt hot-wired and unreasonably alive, as though someone had strung a power cord along her spine and it was shooting sparks through her body.

  “He’s only yanking my chain because he’s a jackass.” Working hard to sound normal, she waved at her laptop to remind Katie of the business at hand. “Can we wrap this up? I really have to get cracking here.”

  Katie frowned, looking resigned. “So no deal?”

  “You know I’ve got reasonable doubt,” Amara said with a conviction she didn’t feel. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be here doing your Monty Hall routine. Your office shouldn’t have brought the charges in the first place, and it wouldn’t have if this wasn’t a senator’s son and you weren’t trying to show taxpayers how tough on crime you are. No deal.”

  Rolling her eyes, Katie slid out of the booth, flipped a couple of bills on the table, and grabbed her things. “See you in the morning, then. Tell Chef Hottie I’ll dream of him tonight.”

  They both laughed, and Amara watched as Katie went through the glass door and disappeared into the night. The diner was empty now except for one of the other regulars, a senior citizen named Esther, who sat at the Formica counter flipping through the paper as she ate her pancakes. Amara was looking back at her screen when the cook reappeared with a new Diet Coke and handed it to her.

  “What’d you do to Katie?”

  Amara took a sip and tried not to bristle at the implication that she’d driven Katie away, which, she supposed, she had. “She left.”

  “Drove her away, eh? That probably happens to you a lot, Bunny. You should work on being less abrasive. You might make a friend or two.”

  Ouch. The mouthful of soda soured to vinegar on her tongue.

  Though he couldn’t know it and she’d die before admitting it, his barbed arrow hit its mark because people, generally speaking, didn’t like her.

  Her personality, it turned out, was a little caustic. Not that she was into self-analysis or anything, but it was probably because she’d grown up in foster care. Maybe she’d developed a defense mechanism to keep people away, not that crowds were knocking down her door trying to get close.

  Anyway, that was how she was wired. If she wanted to get something, she got it, and if she wanted to say something, she said it. Sure, this turned some people off, but she didn’t have time to smooth over people’s hurt feelings. Plus, she couldn’t easily turn off her defense attorney’s fighting instinct outside the courtroom, which resulted in her plowing her way through life. Hazard of the job.

  So, yeah, nobody liked her, but it was rude of him to say it.

  Incensed, Amara recovered her speaking abilities and got over the whole intimidation thing. This guy may be a god sent down from Mount Olympus to torment womankind with lust, but he was still an arrogant SOB who needed a smackdown.

  “I think you’ve got the market cornered on abrasive, Honey,” she said.

  Uh-oh. Wrong tactic. Abort—abort.

  That hint of wickedness came back into his expression, not so much a smile as the disquieting light of amusement in his eyes. Planting his palms on the table, he leaned down, right in her face. “I like the endearment, Bunny. Got anything else for me?”

  “My name is Amara Clarke. Use it. Honey” She extended her hand, wondering exactly how rude he was prepared to be.

  The simple gesture took him by surprise.

  For several long beats, he didn’t seem to know what to do. For all his smirking bravado, she realized, he didn’t want to touch her. His ambivalence was so strong she could almost stick her tongue out and taste it.

  Dark eyes sparking, brows lowered, he glared, apparently cursing her to hell and back for all eternity. Then his gaze wavered and he looked down his straight nose to her hand. Finally, as though he’d never participated in a handshake before and wasn’t quite sure how the procedure worked, he reached out and grasped her hand in his firm grip.

  Holy God.

  There was no preparing for the current of electricity that surged through her body when their palms connected. Nor could she explain the flow of blazing heat between them, which was disproportionate to anything a human being should be able to generate.

  His expression was, for once, unreadable. “Jack. Patterson.”

  He pumped her hand twice, an unremarkable, socially acceptable handshake, and then let go. Without another word, he turned and walked back into the kitchen, leaving the door flapping after him.

  Chapter 2

  Sacramento

  “Ooh, Baby, Baby” played over and over again in the car on the way home from dinner. The Smokey Robinson version first, of course, then Linda Ronstadt.

  They sang together at the top of their lungs, being silly because this much joy refused to stay quie
tly bottled up inside. Only when they rolled down their quiet street and into the driveway of the duplex they rented did Ray Wolfe turn the music down a little; he didn’t want the neighbors talking about them as they walked their dogs tonight. The car idled while they waited for the garage door to open.

  “Why are we singing this song?” Joyce giggled. “It’s about breakups.”

  “Yeah, well.”

  Shrugging, he lifted a hand off the steering wheel, reached under his wife’s filmy flowered skirt, and slid his fingers up her smooth, bare thigh. Her low, throaty laugh and corresponding shiver tightened his groin.

  “Stop, Ray.” Squirming and darting a guilty glance out the window and across the lawn to see if anyone was on the porch next door and within seeing distance, Joyce smacked his hand away. “Just focus on getting us inside the garage, okay?”

  He laughed, navigated the Accord into the cluttered garage, and put it in park. She reached over and hit the remote clipped to his visor, and the garage door hummed again, lowering behind them.

  “Let me see it.”

  Rolling her eyes, Joyce slapped the strip of shiny black and white photos into his waiting palm, and he frowned down at it. “I’m not sure this is a kid, Joy. Looks like a bean to me.”

  “Come on.”

  “I’m just saying.” Leaning across the armrest, he kissed her smiling mouth. “Do we have any other proof you’re pregnant?”

  “Hmmm.” She stroked her tongue across his bottom lip. “Well, the doctor said so.”

  “True.” Opening as she demanded, he kissed her long and deep—until her eyes glazed and he felt his pulsing blood sizzle through his veins. “Anything else?”

  “Well.” She lifted his hand and pressed it to her newly enormous breasts, which, much to his fascination, now required a larger cup size. “Don’t forget these.”

  “How could I forget?” He smiled because his beautiful wife was pregnant, he was about to get some, and life was good. “Let’s go, Joy.”

  He got out of the car.