Risking It All

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.”

“My body parts are the last thing you should be worried about right now.”

“They’re an intriguing alternative to thinking about my problems. Besides, I have you to think about my problems—at least until I fire you.”

That momentarily quelled her, but Grace rallied. “You won’t have to worry about firing me if you don’t cease and desist with this nonsense.”

“Cease and desist? Is that lawyer-speak?”

“It’s woman-speak. Trust me when I tell you that you’ll recognize the difference.”

“I’m not sure my feeble brain can handle the nuances.”

That startled her. “I never said your brain was feeble.”

“You were looking down your nose at me back there in the prison.”

“I was not.”

“You definitely were.”

He was relentless.

The maître d’ came back to them and cleared his throat. Now kissing was on her mind. Grace decided she would gladly pucker up for the dour-faced little gnome in gratitude for the interruption.

“If it wasn’t my intelligence you were casting aspersions on back there, then what was it?” McKenna asked as they started walking again.

Grace almost choked. “I never cast aspersions.”

“Lady, you had aspersions stamped all over that pretty face of yours.”

She decided to ignore him.

Dan Lutz rose when they reached him. He held a hand out to her. Grace braced herself and took it, knowing he would hold on for a while. It was his habit and it always made her uncomfortable.

There was a second place setting at the table with a half-touched plate of hors d’oeuvres, but Lutz was alone. Ah, she thought, this was a time to tread delicately.

“How in the world did you find me?” he asked.

“I called your secretary at home. She suggested that I contact Lou Russell,” she replied, referring to the firm’s other senior partner. “He said I might find you here.”

Lutz sat again, waving a hand at the other chairs to indicate that they should do so as well, then he motioned to the maître d’. “More wine, please, for my guests.”

They exchanged small talk until the wine steward brought two more glasses and another bottle. Lutz never liked to rush into anything. When the steward began to pour, McKenna held a hand out to prevent him from filling his glass.

“I’d prefer a Guinness,” he said.

Grace felt her blood pressure swell a notch. “Drink the damned wine.”

Lutz cleared his throat. “How did you manage to get a bail hearing so quickly?” he asked.

Time to get down to business, Grace thought. “Actually, I…ah, didn’t.”

“Yet here sits a man I presume is Mr. McKenna. Tell me.”

So she did. She explained about the paperwork glitch and how the authorities had no basis on which to hold him, while a waiter brought McKenna the beer. “By now they’re checking the computer system, of course,” she finished. “I’m sure someone has unearthed his proper paperwork and there are probably cops combing the city looking for him. That’s why I came here to find you and solicit your advice.”

“Some of those cops are my friends,” McKenna offered.

“They won’t look very hard.”

Grace felt something go ping behind her eyes. “Will you please shut up and let me handle this?”

“It was a salient point.” He lifted the Guinness to his mouth.

“I never said you were stupid!”

He ran his tongue over his lip to catch the foam, then he replaced his glass to the table. “Sorry, you lost me there. Must be those quicksilver turns of your own mind. What does my stupidity or lack thereof have to do with this?”

“You keep using college-degree words to prove your point.”

“I have a college degree. I’m also insightful and observant. Which reminds me. What were you casting aspersions on back at the prison? We never did answer that question to my satisfaction.”

Grace deliberately shifted her gaze back to Lutz. She grabbed her wineglass, drank deeply and waited for his verdict. She’d either just done something incredibly stupid…or she’d been brilliant.

Lutz stared into the ruby liquid in his own glass for a moment. “Technically, you should deliver him straight back to the arresting officers,” he said finally. “However, without the paperwork, we have no idea who they are, do we?”

Grace relaxed. He approved of what she had done. Then McKenna spoke up again and her nerves tightened.

“Well, technically, I do know who they are. At four o’clock this afternoon I was playing ball with a couple of my nephews at the city courts. Two uniformed patrolmen came by and slapped handcuffs on me. I don’t know how tight you all are with your families, but that’s something I’d have preferred my sister’s kids not be subjected to.”

Grace felt her heart twist. “We can’t always control what children are subjected to.”

“Yeah, well, I try.”

For the first time since she had made his acquaintance, he seemed sincerely angry. He might have slammed his chair around back at the jail, but that had been nothing compared to what simmered in his eyes now.

“They said they had a warrant for my arrest,” McKenna continued. “I went with them rather than play the whole thing out in front of the boys.”

He’d probably been expecting the arrest, she realized. He had to have known the extortion jig would be up for him sooner or later if he played it out too long. He was a cop; he’d know the odds.

“They took me to County and booked me,” he said. “It never occurred to me to check the name on all those blot pages they were affixing my thumbprints to. Stupid of me.”

Grace wasn’t touching that one.

He leaned forward suddenly, bracing his arms on the table to face her. “Funny that you haven’t gotten around yet to asking why Captain Plattsmier didn’t just have me sprung from that jail instead of calling you.”

Because you’ve been pocketing mob money. Grace shot a glance at Lutz. “Getting him out of County seemed paramount when I found the paperwork glitch. I decided to act first and ask questions later.”

“Tell us now,” Lutz said to McKenna.

“Plattsmier didn’t spring me, because this is payback and on some level he’s aware of it. He’s not going to cross whoever’s doing the paying back.”

Lutz and Grace spoke at once. “For what?”

“You’re implying that someone is framing you but you don’t know who?” Grace added.

“I blew the whistle on my partner about six months ago. She was on the take. Now they’re pulling me down for it, either the mob or the cops who’re involved with them.”

Lutz sat back thoughtfully. Grace glanced at her boss and realized that her head hurt. Badly. How much of this was he buying?

“I had no idea what they were hanging on me until Miss Lawyer here told me about the extortion charge.” McKenna inclined his head in her direction.

“What about those arresting officers?” Grace asked quickly.

“They didn’t tell you?”

“Nope.”

She felt something fire in her blood. “There’s a possible loophole.”

“I thought I was better off not pointing that out to them. I didn’t want to give them a chance to mend their mistake.”

She was almost starting to believe him, Grace realized. “The police department is doing this to you?” There had been rumors of corruption, but there were always rumors.

“I’ll put a call in to Chief Baines in the morning,” Lutz said.

“Baines may be in on it,” McKenna said.

“I know.”

Grace thought of another rumor she’d heard. Plattsmier was next in line for Baines’s job. If Baines was dirty, if he was found out and removed, then Plattsmier would become chief. Now she understood why Lutz was so willing to do Plattsmier this favor and take McKenna on free of charge.

“Plattsmier is hedging his bets,” Lutz said. “He’s not a good guy, and he’s not a bad one. I think the jury’s still out on which side he’ll line up on.”

Yes, Grace thought, he definitely believed McKenna.

In the meantime… “What am I supposed to do with him?” She pointed at McKenna.

Lutz took a hotel key from his trousers pocket. “Room 412 at the Penn’s Landing Hyatt.” He glanced at McKenna. “You can’t go home, not until we put this in some sort of order. That’s the first place they’ll look for you.”

Grace felt her headache getting worse. “You’re putting him up in a hotel for the night?” And not just any hotel, she thought. The Hyatt. “Doesn’t that leave us a little vulnerable on aiding and abetting technicalities?”

“At the moment, there’s no paperwork,” Lutz pointed out reasonably. “No one has yet arrested him a second time. Once that happens, of course, we’ll have a horse of a different color. Which is why I want to avoid it as long as possible. By the time I place that call to Baines in the morning, I want this man’s entire story in summary form on my desk. Let’s aim for nine o’clock.”

He’d just consigned her to working pretty much all night. Grace considered the raise she would get when this was over, when she had won.

She decided she didn’t have a problem with that.

Chapter 2

Grace stood and took the key. She didn’t want to know why it had already been in Lutz’s pocket, not with that half-eaten plate of hors d’oeuvres over there on the other side of the table. He had a wife and several children at home.

McKenna remained seated. “How much is this going to cost me?” he asked.

Dan Lutz waved a hand. “That’s not important.”

“With all due respect, it’s kind of an issue for me.”

“We take on a few pro bono cases each year without charge,” Lutz replied.

“I’m not one of them.”

Who was this man? “Do you have any idea what this will cost you otherwise?” she demanded.

McKenna sat back in his chair and watched her. “Gosh, gee, I’ve been a cop in this city for some eleven years now. Have I ever heard of Russell and Lutz?”

An almost-grin pulled at Lutz’s mouth. “I would sincerely hope so.”

“A hundred thousand?” McKenna guessed. “Two hundred? I need to know what I’m up against here.”

“That would be a retainer,” Lutz said equably. “You’d be billed hourly from there, of course, if this escalates.”

“Which? The one hundred thousand or the two?”

“One,” Lutz said. “We’re not God.”

McKenna finally stood. “You’ll have the money by Friday. I don’t take handouts.”

Grace’s blood ran suddenly to ice. She didn’t wait to hear any more. She turned on her heel and left the restaurant. She’d almost bought his story.

She was on the curb outside before he caught up with her. “How does a cop have access to a hundred thousand dollars?” she demanded. “And you expect me to believe that you don’t have that extortion money stashed someplace, that this is all fabricated?”

Then he—this man on the take, this cop gone bad—had the absolute nerve to touch her. He cupped her chin in his hand.

Something happened there at the point of contact. If it had just been heat, she could have jerked from him and let her eyes spit fire. But there was a gentleness there in his grip, too, and it was so at odds with the rest of him that it had her going still, afraid to even take in air.

“I don’t have money stashed anywhere, lady.” Then he paused. “You know, I keep doing that. I keep calling you lady. First impressions and all that. But you’re not a lady at all, are you, despite those incredible legs?”

He was back to her legs again. That was all she could think.

“And you’re not a siren,” he continued. “Once again, your looks aside, I don’t know what you are.”

“You don’t need to know. This isn’t about me.”

“We’re about to share a hotel room tonight—I think that was your boss’s inference with all the talk of reports due by nine in the morning. So I’m thinking that maybe we ought to draw ourselves a few lines in the dirt here.”

She had the wild but certain thought that this man wouldn’t keep to his side of the lines anyway. “Let me go. Don’t touch me. Ever.”

“Sorry.” Finally, blessedly, he dropped his hand. He looked around for a cab. “Not a lady, not a siren. A drill sergeant, maybe. You’re used to giving orders.”

This time Grace found herself touching him. She grabbed his arm to keep him from stepping off the curb as a taxi pulled up. “You’re way out of line!”

He grinned back at her. Grace realized that he’d been deliberately provoking her. She dropped her hand fast.

“Lines,” she reminded him, her breath feeling a little short.

“You wanted lines drawn in the dirt.”

“I just like to know what I’m dealing with before I get cozy with a woman at the Hyatt.”

“I’m not a woman. I’m your attorney. And nobody’s getting cozy.”

It would be too easy, Aidan thought, to let his gaze drop to her breasts while he contemplated that comment, so he forced himself to focus on her mouth instead. What had God been thinking to give a woman a mouth like that? To make blood heat and roar right past common sense and prove that men were fools? But he watched, fascinated, as heat slid into her face, just under her skin, making it glow a soft red in the light that spilled from Bistro Romano.

It made her appear almost vulnerable. He was getting the idea that she was anything but, except she did rattle easily when a man took her off her stride.

“You’re causing a bit of a scene here, honey,” he said finally.

“Better get in the car.”

“I don’t make scenes. And ‘honey’ is not permissible either.”

“Then I guess we’d better start drawing those lines. Sir.”

“Stop it!”

She had a very nice way of turning on one hip, Aidan thought, watching her move toward the waiting car. As he watched her get in, that trim little crimson suit sliding up her thighs, that long dark hair twitching with her movement, he knew beyond a doubt that he had to start drawing those lines—and fast. Even with everything else going on in his life right now she was touching something inside him. And Aidan McKenna was not a man who was going to get sucked in by a beautiful face again.

Inside the cab, Grace made herself breathe. How had all this whirled out of control? One moment, she was just making a side trip to the County prison to see yet another low-life criminal client before heading home. Then he’d turned out to be all male arrogance, but in none of the usual ways. He hadn’t placed his hand coyly over hers when they’d been sitting at the table in the interrogation room the way she’d come to expect from men. He’d just ignited her, and then he’d move in for the kill.

He’d touched her.

Grace slid her palm over the underside of her jaw where his fingers had been. She had to get a grip on this situation. She had to do it five minutes ago.

He finally got into the car beside her. He slouched back against the cracked seat like a lazy tiger when everyone knew there was no such beast.

“The Hyatt, Penn’s Landing,” he said to the driver.

“No!” Grace said quickly.

He gave her a sideways look. “You’re quitting my case?”

“Of course not.” She leaned forward to give the driver her own Society Hill address. “We have to stop at my place first.” She sat back again, careful to keep distance between them.

“Why do I get the feeling we’re not stopping off for a few sweet unmentionables you might need to entice me?”

She honestly wasn’t sure if she was threatened by the laid-back sexual threat of him or if it was his utter disregard for the mess he was in that kept throwing her off. She seized on the latter because the former kept making her forget to breathe.

“You do realize that if they convict you, you’ll be going to jail for a substantially long period of time?” She heard her own voice, her own words, and was reassured that she sounded like herself. “I would suggest that you keep your mind off sex and keep your hands to yourself and let me concentrate on your defense.”

“The jury’s still out as to whether or not I’m keeping you as counsel.”

Grace felt her blood spike in her veins. This time the sensation felt like fear. “I just got you out of jail, didn’t I?”

“True. But you think I’m guilty.”

She did. “I never said that.”

“Lady—no, wait, what did we decide on? I can’t call you lady. Honey, then. Honey, it’s in your eyes.”

“We did not decide on honey. Ms. Simkanian will do just fine.”

“Is that a line in the dirt?”

“Yes. I’m establishing mine.”

“Before we spend the night together,” he clarified.

“We’re not—” Grace broke off suddenly, refusing to rise to the bait again. She gave a quick, hard nod.

“You know, that Ms. stuff never cut it for me,” he said. “My ma was always proud to be called Mrs.”

How did he do this? she wondered incredulously. How did he take every conversation and swing it around to his own agenda? “To the best of my knowledge your mother is not going to jail, so might we leave her out of this?”

“What were we talking about again?”

“I didn’t say you were guilty!”

“And I repeat, you didn’t have to…Ms.”

The cab lurched to a stop in front of her apartment building. Grace was so tense, sitting forward to stare sideways at him, that she almost hit the back of the driver’s seat. She swore under her breath and leaned her weight against the door to open it. “Wait here. I’ll be right back. If I’m going to give Dan a summary of your whole mess by morning, which, of course, you are in no way responsible for, then I’m going to need my laptop.”

“You only need a single sheet of paper, Ms. I didn’t do anything. That’s all you have to write down.”

“The judges I know are a little harder to sell than that.” Grace got out and slammed the cab door. Hard.

At the same moment she heard a familiar tsking sound come from the direction of the sidewalk. She looked that way and nearly groaned aloud. Sylvie Casamento. Her across-the-hall neighbor. The woman was out walking her cat.

This apartment building was Grace’s one true financial weakness, the one thing she allowed herself to spend money on.

She’d grabbed the top-floor, one-bedroom apartment for a mere thousand dollars per month in her last year of law school. The building was a nineteenth-century brownstone owned by an octogenarian who’d been dropped into a retirement home by his eventual heirs. Periodically they tried to prove that he was incompetent, but the old guy always triumphed over them. The sad truth was that when his wife had died he’d no longer been able to bear living in their home without her. He’d converted the place into apartments and had moved into a tiny, cramped studio that made his heirs fear for his mind. He charged next-to-nothing, by Philadelphia standards, for the units, probably just to irritate them.

All the same, the rent had required everything Grace could scrape together each month from waitressing. She’d been planning on picking up a second job when she’d found Jenny Tower standing outside Penn Center Station looking lost, overwhelmed or maybe ecstatic—Grace had yet to figure out which. Jenny was straight off a series of buses and trains from some farm outside Topeka. She had landed in Philly with nowhere particular to go and no real plan. Grace had taken her home with her if only to talk some sense into her.

That had been two years ago. Jenny had spent the better part of those two years sleeping on a sofa bed in the living room. Grace had had the apartment first so she figured she had the right to the only bedroom. Her rent had immediately dropped to five hundred a month. Then, a few months ago, Sam Case—who’d rented one of the two-bedroom units on the second floor—had married Mandy Hillman, who had the two-bedroom unit on the first floor. He’d moved downstairs and Grace and Jenny had taken over Sam’s old apartment. Now Jenny had her own room.

Sylvie Casamento was right there in the middle of all of them to keep her disparaging eye on anything that even remotely concerned her and a lot that didn’t. And at the moment she was very interested in the man in the cab. She was already inching toward the car to peer inside. Who knew what McKenna would tell her given the chance?

Grace turned back and yanked open the door again. “I changed my mind. You’re coming with me.”

“No, thanks,” McKenna said. “I’ll just wait.”

“That wasn’t an option. Now,” she added in a fierce undertone when he still didn’t move.

“On second thought, yes, sir, I’m on my way.”

Grace headed past Mrs. C toward the lobby, then she stalked across the pretty black-and-white tiles and the ferns there. She scooted past Sam and Mandy’s door and took the stairs two at a time to the second floor. She was on the landing before she finally heard McKenna behind her. She did not hear Sylvia Casamento. With any luck, the woman had walked on with that nasty beast she called a feline.

Grace burst into her apartment as if all the demons of hell were trying to grab her heels. Jenny was sitting on the sofa, watching TV.

“I’ve got to go out again,” Grace told her quickly.

Jenny’s gaze came around to find her. “Hmm? How come?”

Then all six-foot-two inches of green-eyed, blond-haired Aidan McKenna finally strolled in behind Grace. “I need her,” he explained conversationally.

There were a few things in life that Grace knew she really didn’t tolerate well. One of them was having a stranger touch her. Surprises weren’t high on her hit list either. In the past half hour, McKenna had done both.

When she wheeled on him, she felt all the telltale signs of an imminent temper tantrum. He was looking around as though contemplating where to sit.

“You will not move from that spot,” she told him.

“So what’s the price of admission?”

“There is none. I’ll only be a minute. There’s no need for you to come in.”

“He’s already as in as a bug in a rug,” Jenny pointed out.

Grace whipped back to look at her roommate and McKenna waltzed right past her. “Hey!” she shouted as he sat beside Jenny on the sofa.

“You know, I never understood that expression,” he said to Jenny.

Her head was starting to hurt again. Grace drove her fingers into her hair. “That’s because she said it wrong. Bugs aren’t ‘in.’ They’re ‘snug.’” She knew. She’d made it a point over the years to understand English colloquialisms and catalogue them in her memory. It was just another way of banishing her past. And why in the name of heaven was she discussing this anyway? Jenny always tortured analogies—it wasn’t worth the time or effort to try to set her straight.

But McKenna wasn’t willing to let the subject go. “‘In’ can be ‘snug,’” he said. “In my experience anyway.” Then he grinned wickedly.

Grace felt the heat of his look—and the innuendo of his comment—all the way to her bones. Something started to vibrate at the core of her. “Stop that.”

“Stop what?” he asked innocently. Then he glanced at Jenny again. “Does she mellow out toward the wee hours of the morning? I just ask because we’re about to spend the night together.”

“She’s kind of muzzy around the edges when she first wakes up in the morning,” Jenny replied. “Sort of like—you’re what?” She gasped when his comment hit her.

“Stop! Both of you, just stop!” Grace shouted. Oh, God, she thought, he’d made her shout again. “Don’t speak to him,” she told Jenny. “Don’t encourage him. And you—” She pointed at McKenna and then at the door. “You wait in the cab.”

“You just told me to wait in here.”

“That was because Mrs. Casamento was outside. Now I’ve changed my mind.”