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Reeve doesn’t say anything, but his eyes burn with anger and sympathy.

“I had it rough, but despite having hardly anything at all, the one thing I did have was love. My mom provided me with so much love, none of the other stuff really mattered.”

“I don’t know what to say,” Reeve says in a raspy voice, his hands tightening on my knees.

I continue my story. “My mom worked odd jobs. She didn’t have a high school education, having dropped out of school after falling in with a bad crowd who liked to party hard. She got pregnant with me, and I don’t know my father because my mom doesn’t know who he is. He was a passing face, a faded memory from a night when she was so high on drugs she didn’t get his name and didn’t insist he use a condom.”

“Jesus,” Reeve whispers.

“But she loved me. More than anything. She gave up drugs and alcohol when she got pregnant with me, never used again. But work was hard to find in eastern, rural North Carolina. We had good times that would provide the occasional mac and cheese. We had bad times, though, when she was out of work, and by bad I mean I would go days without eating unless it was a school lunch. My mom had choices to make. She’d have just enough money to pay the electricity bill, and during the winter, we had to have heat, so that meant no food. We were always giving up something to get something else.”

Reeve’s hands leave my knees and travel up my arms, stroking me with reassurance as I continue my story.

“I remember a few times that I was so hungry I couldn’t stop crying, which would make my mom cry.” I take a deep breath, push it out, and bare a very personal fact about my life. “She’d have men come over to our trailer. They would disappear into her back bedroom, and I would hear noises coming out of there and the bed knocking against the wall. I was too young to really know what it meant, but I know that when the men left, my mom would have money and she could buy me food.”

“Fuck,” Reeve mutters.

“You understand what I’m saying?” I ask him quietly.

He nods, his eyes swimming in sadness.

“My mom would have done anything, and I mean anything, to nourish me. There is nothing she wouldn’t have sacrificed, nothing she wouldn’t have risked, to try to keep me fed and sheltered. She did that because she loved me.”

“She loved you very much,” Reeve murmurs, lacing his fingers through mine.

“She taught me my most important lesson in life,” I tell him so he starts to understand where I’m coming from. “There are some people you risk everything for. So going back to the question Danny asked me in my interview . . . yes, in a heartbeat I’d put my license at risk for my mother or someone I loved. It’s a no-brainer to me.”

Reeve knifes upward in the bed, his arms banding around me and pulling me close. His mouth crushes onto mine, and he kisses me so deeply I know I’ll still feel it tomorrow. He seems desperate, as if he’s trying to convey his understanding with his tongue and teeth. My arms wrap around his neck, and I feel him start to swell underneath my bottom.

Pulling away from the deep connection of the kiss, he leaves his lips resting gently against mine. “I think you might be the most amazing person I’ve ever met.”

“Do you get me now?” I whisper, my lips moving against his.

“Yeah . . . I get you now,” he says and then kisses me again.

CHAPTER 14

REEVE

I’m sitting in Leary’s large conference room, flipping through my presentation. I was the first to arrive this morning for the mediation because I always like to take extra time to set up and skim through my notes. Any moment I’m expecting the others, including Leary and Jenna as well as Tom Collier and retired judge Peter Goetge, who will be the one who will direct and mediate any potential negotiations today.

I don’t expect that Tom will offer much money, so this is probably all just a formality. After today, it’s crunch time.

We’re just shy of a month from the trial, and I’m starting to get stressed.

Ordinarily, trials don’t cause me any worry. Some lawyers get physically ill, the prospect of standing in front of twelve strangers more than they can bear. Add in an irate judge, and the anxiety level increases tenfold. Add in high-stakes money, and some lawyers have to medicate.

Not me.

I love the adrenaline rush, the spotlight, and the competition of it all.

Normally.

Not with the LaPietra case, though.

I’m getting stressed because every day that the trial looms closer, it means that Leary is going to find out just how devious I can be in the courtroom. When she learns of my deviousness, and when it causes her case to fail, she’s going to hate me for it.

There’s not a day that hasn’t gone by when I don’t argue with myself over what to do. Half the time I think I should just throw my professional ethics out the window and divulge to her what I know about Jenna. The other half of the time, I keep hoping that something else will happen to save me from it all. Like, maybe a comet will strike the earth. Or TransBenefit will fold into bankruptcy. Or Jenna will hit the lottery and this case won’t matter anymore.

Ironically, the only real thing that has kept me somewhat sane has been Leary herself. Every moment I’m with her is complete and absolute escape from the harsh realities of my job. I don’t think about anything else. I concentrate only on her. I want to live in a world where there’s only Leary and me . . . and Mr. Chico Taco, too.

All silly pipe dreams.

So I continue on, taking advantage of every precious second with this beautiful, sexy, and complex woman.

Luckily for me, there are a lot of seconds, minutes, and hours when we’re together. We’ve fallen into a natural routine. Leary has started staying at my house every night, mainly so Chico doesn’t have to go stay with Vanessa. This has been at Leary’s insistence, and I thought it was very sweet of her to consider his feelings. But then she did something one day that I’ll never forget.

I walked into my living room. She was sitting on my couch with Chico’s head in her lap. She was rubbing his ears and making cooing noises at him. She bent over and whispered in his ear, “You love me more than Vanessa, don’t you, buddy?”

I had to turn around and walk back into the kitchen and place a kitchen towel in my mouth so she couldn’t hear me laughing. It had become clear to me that Leary was staying at my house to gain favor with my dog and turn his allegiance from Vanessa over to her.

Fucking adorable.

After that night several weeks ago when she told me about her mother and the things she did for Leary’s well-being, things changed between us. She opened up to me, I accepted the gift, and from that moment forward, I entered into a committed relationship with her. Not just in a monogamous sense, but committed to this woman’s emotional well-being.

Everything about her became important to me. Every touch from her, every sound out of her mouth, every nuance of her day. It all became mine. I possessed her and she consumed me. But for this stupid fucking trial, my existence would be absolutely perfect.

Unfortunately, Leary did not stay with me last night because she had work to do. So did I, for that matter. In fact, we were both holed up in our respective offices, working on the LaPietra case because we’re holding the mediation today.

Fuck, I missed her in my bed last night. She’s fast becoming a necessity to me. While I was working, I couldn’t help reaching out to her.