Close Proximity

It was Libby. She was making him care. She was making him soft.

He couldn’t afford that. He couldn’t.

“We’re arguing trial location tomorrow.”

Rafe nodded, but didn’t turn around. He was glad for something to focus his attention on. “Trial location?” he asked.

“Opposing counsel wants to go to Los Angeles,” she said. “He’s looking to make this high-profile. But I want to stay here. I know there are lots of people ranting against the contamination. Against Dad. But I’m hoping things will calm down and they’ll remember who’s on trial here.”

She’d be safely cloistered in the courthouse during the day, he thought.

“And what would you like for me to do while you’re occupied with that?”

“I was hoping you’d do a little investigating. Talk to some people.” Glancing at her watch, she said, “I’m due to visit Dad. If you don’t mind, you could come along with me. He wants to thank you for helping out. And while we’re there, we can get a list of names from him. Springer execs, employees, friends who might know something. While I’m busy at the courthouse, you can try to touch base with as many of them as possible. Take some notes. Find out what people told the police. See if anyone knows or suspects anything that might help us nail the real culprit.”

Rafe knew himself to be one of those people. He had a definite theory about the whys behind the chemical dumping, and he also had what could only be described as a scrap of evidence to back it up. However, hearsay was what the authorities would call it.

Hearsay coming from anyone was, at best, flimsy proof. Coming from an Indian, it would be considered idle talk. Meaningless scuttlebutt. That was why he hadn’t gone to the police about what he’d overheard all those weeks ago. And he didn’t tell Libby now because he didn’t think he could continue working with her if he were to reveal all he knew—all he suspected—and she reacted with doubt and skepticism.

He’d hold his tongue until he knew she trusted him. He’d play his cards close to the chest for now. Focus on digging up more information so he could lay out the pieces of the puzzle for her with simple clarity, with nothing but hard evidence. If real proof of David’s innocence was out there, Rafe would find it. And it had to be out there.

“Sounds like a good plan to me,” he told her, reaching for his jacket from where it hung on the back of the chair. “Let’s go see your father.”

David Corbett was sitting alone in the cold, stark interrogation room when Rafe and Libby entered. The metal table was dented, battered, extremely utilitarian. The walls were painted a greenish gray. Drab. Lifeless. Depressing as hell, Rafe decided.

Although his face was clean-shaven, dark smudges underscored David’s eyes. His brow was puckered, his jaw tight. He looked like a man with a great deal of anxiety eating at his thoughts.

Libby smiled brightly, hurrying to his side and bending to kiss his cheek.

“Hi, Dad.” She set her leather case on the tabletop. “How are you?”

“Fine, hon. I’m just fine.” David shifted his attention to Rafe. “Rafe, it’s good to see you. Pardon me if I don’t get up.”

Rafe thought it strange when the man offered him his left hand, but quickly realized that David’s right wrist was handcuffed to the arm of the chair he was sitting in. Taking the man’s hand in both of his, Rafe pumped it vigorously.

“It’s good to see you, sir.”

David shook his head. “Stop with the sir stuff, if you don’t mind. We’re meeting here as friends. At least, I hope we are.”

“Absolutely, sir.”

Realizing what he’d said, Rafe offered up an apologetic smile and David chuckled.

“Don’t you ever doubt it,” Rafe added.

“I appreciate your wanting to help my daughter with this mess I’m in.”

Darting a quick look at Libby, Rafe saw appreciation glistening in her gaze, and his heart jumped, tendrils of heat curling low in his gut. Her gratitude shouldn’t be causing him such satisfaction, but it did.

Warning flags waved in his brain. He wished his reactions to this woman had some sort of switch he could flip off or a cord he could sever.

“Trial location arguments begin tomorrow,” Libby informed her father, getting right down to the business at hand. “It could take a couple of days, maybe more, for the judge to make his decision. While I’m busy at the courthouse, I thought Rafe could do a little interviewing.” She opened her case and extracted a yellow legal pad and pen. “Dad, can you think of anyone…anyone at all who might shed some light on things?”

She slid the pad in front of her father, handing the pen to him.

Then her brows drew together, moisture instantly shimmering in her eyes, when she evidently realized the handcuffs were going to be a detriment to him. It was so obviously hard for her, Rafe reflected, seeing her father like this. She cleared the emotion from her throat as she reached for the paper.

“How about if I take down the names?”

David placed a quelling hand on the pad. “I’ll make do, hon. I’ll make do.” He picked up the pen in his left hand.

Libby nodded, muttering, “Idiot guards.” She rose from her chair, her cheeks flushed with sudden anger, and went to the locked door. She banged on it. Hard. “Can someone come in here? Now!”

A guard appeared and she demanded that her father be released. The guard stiffly informed her that would be impossible. He did, however, agree to switch the handcuffs to David’s left wrist. All the while, Rafe sat silent, watching, his protective instinct stirring. However, rising to give the policeman more grief would do nothing whatsoever to help the situation. Once the task was performed, the guard left the room, locking the door behind him.

David was busy writing, but, with his head still bent over the pad, he softly asked, “Should we think about making a bargain?”

“What?”

Rafe heard the sharpness in Libby’s tone. Her father refused to lift his gaze from where it was glued to the task at hand.

She reached out and touched David’s forearm. “Dad,” she said, her voice more pliant, “you don’t know what you’re saying. We haven’t had a chance to view the evidence. We don’t know that a plausible case can even be made against you. Why on earth would you want to admit defeat before we’ve even had a chance to put up a fight?”

Libby seemed to run out of energy suddenly, and Rafe glanced at her. Her expression was…odd. A frown puckered her brow. Concern darkened her eyes. She was gazing off, seeming to wrestle with some troubling thoughts. The urge to reach out to her was powerful, but it was overridden by the strong, abrupt sense that he was being stared at.

David’s brown gaze narrowed on him, and Rafe was sure the man was trying to convey a message of some sort. However, when Libby’s attention returned to the moment, his head dipped, and he once again began pushing the pen against the paper.

“We can fight this, Dad. We can.”

“I know we can, hon.”

But Rafe didn’t hear much conviction in his words. David’s demeanor was strange, Rafe thought. It was almost as if he was convinced that the battle was lost even before it had begun. Not at all like the strong-willed man Rafe had expected David Corbett to be.

“I’ve done a little reading…”

Rafe only half listened to Libby, his attention homing in on David. Each and every time that the man’s daughter turned her gaze away, David would spear Rafe with a sharp, almost desperate look.

“And since the authorities aren’t pursuing Springer,” Libby continued, “that must mean that the company is cooperating with them against you. I can’t believe the upper management creeps would do that to you after all you’ve given that company.”

Once again, with quick, darting glances, David kept indicating the legal pad on which he wrote. Finally, Rafe gave one nearly imperceptible nod to let the man know he understood.

What could David possibly want to convey that he didn’t want Libby to know? Libby was his lawyer. She couldn’t represent him if she didn’t know everything.

Immediately, Rafe thought of the small puzzle piece he’d refused to present. But it wasn’t as if he was never going to reveal all to the woman. He simply wanted to wait until he had more solid proof.

“As far as I’ve been able to tell—” Libby reached into her briefcase and extracted a notebook, flipping it open “—there’s not been a precedent set in a case like this. And as hot as environmental issues are these days, it could be that the authorities are thinking of setting you up as an example.”

Frustration flushed David’s neck and cheeks. “But I didn’t do anything. I wouldn’t do—”

“I know that, Dad.” Her very air become soft and consoling. “And we’ll prove that, too. Where it counts. In court.”

Father and daughter shared a brief silence, and Rafe was left feeling as though he were intruding on a special moment. Then Libby went back to studying her notes.

“One good thing,” she said. “Setting a precedent on any issue isn’t easy. They’ve got to have proof. Rock solid. And since you didn’t have anything to do with the contamination, then they’re going to have a hard time coming up with what they need, now, aren’t they?”

It was a rhetorical question, meant only to bolster and encourage.

David tore off the top sheet from the pad, then leaned toward the table, obviously intending to hand the paper to Rafe. But Libby reached for it.

“Thanks, Dad.”

In that instant, Rafe read panic in the older man’s expression. Reaching out, he slipped the paper from David’s fingers before Libby even had a chance to touch it.

“I’ll take care of that,” Rafe said to no one in particular.

Libby looked a little startled. For a moment Rafe was worried that she’d insist on taking possession of the list her father had compiled. But in the end she seemed to shrug it off.

“Well,” she said, “would you mind getting me a copy of those names? For my records.”

Keeping his tone light, he assured her, “Sure thing.” He folded the yellow paper into a smaller rectangle and tucked it safely into his breast pocket. However, the list felt as if it were a flaring match, blistering hot against his skin, so badly did he want to discover the secret message David had written.

Not long afterward, Libby and Rafe were heading out of the jailhouse.

“It’s upsetting,” Libby commented out of the blue. “He seems so depressed, so defeated. I mean, I know he’s under a lot of pressure. He was just fired by a company he’d dedicated his whole life to. He’s been accused of a horrendous crime, but…”

Her long, slender throat convulsed in a swallow, and Rafe wondered what it would feel like to press his fingertips against her soft, creamy skin. Or better yet, his lips. At once, hormones pulsed through his body, fierce and fervent. He clamped a lid on his runaway libido, forcing his thoughts back to the subject at hand: David’s behavior during their visit.

Rafe had thought the same thing about Libby’s father’s demeanor. There had seemed to be no fight in him. But feeling that Libby needed to hear something a little more heartening, he said, “Once we get our hands on the evidence, once we start talking to people, planning our strategy, he’ll perk up.”

“I’m sure you’re right.”

But her sea-green gaze was still clouded with doubt, and he was left wondering what other misgivings were causing her such tremendous anxiety. He’d have loved nothing more than to hug her to him and assure her that everything was going to be all right. But she wouldn’t appreciate such an act. And he certainly didn’t dare put himself in such a role. It would surely change their professional relationship into something personal. Intimate. And that was something he meant to avoid.

“It’s still early,” Libby finally said. “I think I’ll shoot over to the courthouse.”

Rafe nodded, looking at his wristwatch. “I could run home and check on my horses. How about if I meet you back at your father’s house in, say, an hour?”

“That sounds good to me.”

With a final wave, Libby got into her car and drove away.

Immediately, Rafe reached up and plucked David’s list from his breast pocket. The paper was crisp against his fingertips as he swiftly unfolded it. His eyes scanned down the list of names. He found David’s message near the bottom, carefully written as if it was just one more name of someone to be interviewed.

Protect Libby.

Four

“S o what good does it do us to know that David eats out more than eighty percent of the time?” Rafe commented. “Or that he replenishes his wardrobe like clockwork every six months? Or buys a new car every five years?”

Libby poked her chopsticks down into the white cardboard container and extracted a crunchy snow pea, grinning as she slid it into her mouth and chewed. For someone who wasn’t used to this task, studying piles of evidence could be frustrating. Poor Rafe was probably sorry he’d offered to help her. She may have won the argument to have the trial held here in Prosperino, but now she and Rafe faced the daunting task of sorting through the mountain of papers and playing guessing games as to the opposing counsel’s strategy.

Once she’d swallowed, she said, “I told you the prosecution would want to look at Dad’s finances. They were hoping to find some unexplainable deposits, searching for a secret stash—”

“But there’s none of that here. Every penny is meticulously recorded. Every deposit in his bank account is either his salary or his yearly bonus from Springer. It’s all accounted for. It’s all thoroughly legit. The man is innocent as a newborn lamb. Surely they’ll see that.”

Libby knew by Rafe’s use of “they” that he’d meant the attorneys who were trying to convict her father.

“To them, the only thing this proves,” she told him, “is that Dad is smart enough not to deposit unexplained funds in his bank account. For all they know, he’s got a big, fat Swiss bank account.”

“If they’re allowed to present that line of reasoning,” he cut in, “how are we ever to prove his innocence?”

“Proving his innocence isn’t our job,” she explained. “It’s the other side’s job to do the proving. Dad’s innocent until proven guilty. That’s the beauty of the U.S. court system. Our job is to refute any evidence they present.”

“True. But if a man with such an upstanding character as David Corbett can be arrested, then it only shows one thing—this legal system of ours can be unpredictable. It can be crazy.”

She nodded, smiling. “Yep, I agree. Sometimes it’s both those things. But it’s all we’ve got so we’d better decide to work with it.”

He stretched his neck one way, then the other. Then he lifted his arms and reached high, elongating the muscles of his well-formed arms and torso.

It was impossible for Libby to keep her gaze from dipping to his massive chest. Working with Rafe during the evenings as they read over the first batch of evidence that was provided to them was so hard for her. With his long, flowing hair, his powerful build, those amazingly intense mahogany eyes, he was more attractive to her than any other man she’d ever met.

Even Stephen.

And she hadn’t imagined ever wanting a man as much as she’d thought she’d wanted Stephen back in her law-school days. The rat! She shut down the dark memories, refused to give them an opportunity to rear their ugly heads. Instead, she focused on the man sitting at the dining room table with her now.

Rafe’s eyes were closed, his chin tipped up, as he stretched the kinks from his muscles. My, how she’d love to run her fingers down the naked length of him. She could only imagine how hard, how sculpted his body would feel.

Libby tightened her grip on the chopsticks until she feared they’d snap in two.

“I could use some more wine,” she told him. “How about you?”

She stuck the sticks into the now tepid Chinese vegetables and set down the container where it wouldn’t stain the papers that were stacked on the table.

“Sure.” He got up and turned to go into the kitchen.

Soft blue denim hugged his butt. And what a nice, tight butt it was, too.

Libby grinned. She was being so bad. She knew it, and it was so unlike her.

She was not looking to get involved with Rafe. Her experience in the past had made her resolve not to get involved with any man. Relationships were just too painful.

But what harm was there in checking out the view? she wondered, her smile widening.

What she’d really like was to see the slick, black river of hair flowing free against the bare flesh covering the wide, strong expanse of his muscular back. To feel those silken tresses against her own naked flesh. A loose and languid chuckle rose in her throat and she did her best to stifle it.

“What has you grinning from ear to ear?” he asked, standing in the doorway between the kitchen and dining room, the open bottle of wine in his hand.

Her eyes widened a fraction and she felt a sudden flush of embarrassment at having been caught in the midst of such naughty, purely erotic thoughts. Her smile disappeared in a puff like dry, brittle paper in fire. One instant the extremely carnal imagery was there, the next it was gone.

“Nothing,” she told him. She slid her wineglass away from her. “On second thought, I think I’ve had enough wine for one evening.”

He corked the bottle. “Then I should go. It’s nearly midnight and you need to be at the courthouse by eight in the morning. I’ve stayed too long as it is.”

After setting the merlot on the table, he reached for his jacket.

“Rafe—”

When his rich russet gaze landed on her, she found it hard to breathe, nearly impossible to speak, so great was the wave of gratitude that suddenly engulfed her.

His eyes held an intensity, a power, a raw force, that she’d never in her life experienced.

What a ridiculous notion, she silently chided herself. The only thing that was wrong with her at the moment was that she’d had too much to drink. She was tired and stressed to the max.

Nevertheless, she was compelled to reveal her thoughts to him.

“I want to thank you. You’ve been such a great help to me this past week. Without you, I’d have been all alone in this.”

For long seconds he just stood there. She found her mind roving over the different opinions she’d formed about him. He was a proud man. And she found that pride to be almost overwhelmingly appealing. He was intelligent and diligent. Detail oriented. He’d worked hard to attain his dream of having a horse ranch. He was self-sufficient, from what she could tell, asking help from no one, although he’d been quick to offer her father assistance when it was needed.

Rafe James was a man to be admired. And Libby was discovering that she might be coming to admire him way too much.

“I’m glad I could help,” he said. “I really am.”

The very air seemed to hum with some sort of undercurrent, Rafe thought as he stood there, jacket in hand. And the hum was growing louder—and harder to ignore—with each passing day.

She was a stunningly beautiful woman with her sun-fire curls and those amazing aquamarine eyes. And although his body pulsed with desire for her, she had more than mere physical beauty going for her. She was one hell of a lawyer.

When the two of them had first broken into the boxes of evidence provided by the court, she’d angrily lamented that the prosecutor had sent none of the important documents.

“I won’t let them get away with these delaying tactics,” she’d promised.

And she hadn’t, either. She’d filed a complaint with the judge the very next day. A complaint that ultimately caused the judge to lecture the opposing counsel. A chagrined prosecutor had stiffly promised Libby that more of the evidence would be forthcoming.

However, even though Libby seemed so very confident wearing her professional hat, Rafe couldn’t deny his suspicions that, deep down inside, she was as fragile as a sparrow, her self-esteem tenuous and delicate. He couldn’t say why he felt this way. He just did.

Maybe it was the small, self-deprecating asides she was in the habit of murmuring to herself when she thought no one else was listening. Or maybe it was the doubt that often shadowed her lovely gaze.

Whatever the reason, he knew he was often swamped by the urge to shield her. From the world at large. From the reporters who were so willing to place guilt even before the trial had begun. From the worry of the case. Even from herself and the long hours she insisted on working.

And that inclination to protect her, more and more often, seemed to weave itself amid the potent attraction he felt for her. As the days wore on, he was becoming less able to clearly delineate his feelings. All he had to do was look at her, he was coming to realize, and sentiment churned, his blood heated. Where she was concerned his emotions were becoming mysterious, confused, evocative.

But as complicated as his reaction to her was becoming, he still had every intention of ignoring it. The events in his past had forced him into a certain way of living, a certain way of thinking and feeling. For mere survival’s sake.

And Rafe knew he was much too hard for a delicate dove such as Libby.

What he needed to do was disregard the humming current pulsing between them. Pay no heed to the desires of his body. The right thing to do would be to bid her good-night and walk away.

But as he was about to do just that, she said, “I don’t think you understand.”

Anxiety, dark and spectral, seeped into Libby’s blue-green gaze and it tore at Rafe’s very soul. Without conscious thought, he lowered the hand that was holding his jacket and the hem hit the floor. He waited.

She swallowed, and it was clear to him that it was taking a great deal of her energy to remain composed.

“I honestly do believe that, without you, I’d be in this all on my own.” Pausing, she tucked her full bottom lip between her teeth. “I…I hate to say this. But I just don’t think my dad has much faith in me. I think…I really think he doubts my ability to represent him.”

His brow puckered. “That’s silly, Libby.”

Hurt shimmied across her expression and Rafe immediately was sorry for his choice of words.

“What makes you say that?” he asked.

Libby hesitated, and he got the sense that she was debating what or how much to tell him.

Finally, she said, “He didn’t want me to come to Prosperino. He used the excuse that this case was sure to get messy and he didn’t want my professional name and reputation connected to it. But I just have a feeling…”

Apprehension bathed her beautiful face.

“I just think he doesn’t have confidence in me.”

The urge to go to her was strong, almost stronger than his will to do what was right.

She needed reassurance. She needed support, comfort, encouragement.

He desperately wanted to give her all those things. The very essence of him called out for him to act.

But doing so would lead him down a road he didn’t want to travel. He’d be wronging her and his own convictions. So, instead, he forced his feet to remain riveted in place and he let a smile soften his features.

“That really is silly,” he repeated, this time knowing that his expression kept the words from being hurtful. “Your father is up to his neck in hot water. If he thought you couldn’t pull him out before he drowned, he’s smart enough to speak up about it. I believe that.” Then he added, “You can believe that, too.”

Her gaze cleared, and his heart lightened, his blood simmered in his veins.

Great Father above, he was going to need help ignoring the desire he felt for this woman. Lots of help.

His assurances had been gruff at best. But he was relieved that they had been enough to bolster her. At least for the moment.

The night air was nippy as he made his way to his truck. But rather than curse the chill, he thanked fate for the opportunity to cool the need pulsing through him and wake his sleepy senses. He forced the craving he felt for Libby from his mind, from his body, and focused on the important duty awaiting him. Protecting David’s daughter.