This was how the thoughtful analysis part went. If I gave up the gang case, Braden would be relieved and if he were less stressed out, he would be more reasonable about the other cases I handled. It wouldn’t have any impact on my career to give it up and the case didn’t have any special significance to me. Braden wasn’t doing this to try to control me or because he didn’t respect me. His fears weren’t totally unrealistic, even if amazingly few public defenders were actually lost, or even injured, in the line of duty. Mark had offered to take it and I would take whatever case he wanted to give me in return, so it wasn’t like I was unloading it on someone.
And this was how the searching my feelings part went. I don’t want to fight! Especially not over something stupid!
“Okay,” I said, committing to my choice. “If it means that much to you, I’ll trade cases with someone else. I can see if Mark will still take it and I’ll take one of his really lousy, but nevertheless, nonviolent cases.”
Braden looked stunned. I think he had been prepared for this to turn into a battle. I saw all kinds of emotions cross his face but the strongest ones appeared to be relief and love. I knew immediately that I had made the right decision.
“You would do that for me?” He had stopped pacing.
“Yes, if it means that much to you. It’s just one case. We are going to have to come up with some plan, though, because there will be others, and for the record, I would rather you didn’t handle them either; so we had better think of something fast.”
“Okay,” he agreed. “And thank you. I promise that I’ll try to come up with a plan.” Phew. Crisis avoided. Amazing what a little discussion and compromise could accomplish.
“What’s the plan for tonight?” I leaned against the defense table and looked up at my beautiful, and very happy looking fiancé.
“Some guys from my office invited me out to O’Malley’s with them for beers after work. I haven’t hung with them in a while and I think that I’d like to go.” He walked over to me and pushed a strand of hair behind my ear.
“They’re not going out to pick up women, are they?” I teased, giving him a raised eyebrow.
“No,” he assured me with a smile. “That’s Adam and Mark and they usually go out later and somewhere besides O’Malley’s. Most of these guys are happily married.”
“Well, okay then.” I smiled. “As long as you promise to say nice things about me. I’ll pick up Bruno and go back to my place and then Lily and Jess and I can get ready and have some fun of our own together. Remind Adam to be nice to Lily, by the way.”
“I’ll do my best but I can’t make any promises.”
“Don’t forget that we’re also there tonight to see if someone was trying to send us a message with that napkin.”
“Yeah okay, Nancy Drew. I’m just happy that I get to be included in The Mystery of Club 51. I would hate to think of what I might walk in on this time.” He leaned down to kiss me goodbye and promised to call me later.
As I walked back to my office, I told myself that this would be exciting. Not that I was a big fan of clubs but it really had been a while since I had gone out with a bunch of friends. Speaking of friends, Jess would get to put on a sexy dress and some high heels with Cam there to check her out. That should give him a nice little nudge. And there was always the possibility that someone had left the napkin on purpose, and they would try to contact us there. Maybe we could figure out who had sent me those notes, and whether or not someone was really following me.
Best of all, though, I was going on a date with Braden! Thinking about how good he looked on the last date almost made my mouth water. All that sexy in one package. It almost wasn’t fair. It didn’t matter that he had ridden me like Secretariat in the jury room the day before, I was going to put on my sexy clothes and get my boyfriend’s engine revved. He had seen me in an elegant gown but he had never seen me in a little black dress and six inch heels.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Lily Adler and I had been friends since we attended Penn Law together. She had gone to law school mostly to please her family. It was her dream to be an author, and presently she worked as a law librarian rather than as an attorney because it gave her more time and freedom to write. She and Jess had hit it off immediately when I introduced them. The three of us were close, although lately Lily had been distracted by her career as an author and I had been distracted by Braden.
She came over to our place at eight and she looked great in a red dress that flattered her curvy figure and her dark brown hair and eyes. The three of us chatted and managed to polish off a bottle of wine while Jess and I got dressed. I really was starting to get excited! We danced around Jess’s room to 80s music which we all liked, and in between choruses of Don’t You Want Me Baby, I filled Lily in on the details of everything that had happened to me in the past month. Bruno, not being one to discriminate when it came to petting, made his rounds between the three of us, busting all of his most adorable Chihuahua moves.
“So Braden’s cousin was that guy from college?” Lily asked. She had heard the most basic details one drunken night back in law school. “But you’re friends again now. So, I guess you forgave him?” She took another sip of wine. We had just opened bottle number two.
“He says that he really did have feelings for me, but he was going through a hard time and he was feeling really down on himself,” I said, standing with my back to Jess’s mirror and nearly dislocating a few vertebra attempting to examine how my ass looked in the dress. “I took him by surprise when I told him that it had been my first time and it made him feel even worse. Like he had taken advantage of me or something.”
“So I guess he didn’t realize that he was entering uncharted territory at the moment of truth, huh?” she asked, raising her eyebrows and scratching Bruno’s belly. He had rolled over on his back and turned his head to plead with her silently with those big brown eyes. He was a little doggie flirt.
“I guess not. It wasn’t a big deal for me though,” I said fluffing up the waves in my hair. “When it wasn’t going in very easily, he just had to push a little harder and that worked! He was in! It hardly hurt at all even though Yale was almost as well endowed as Harvard and Harvard is really well endowed, let me tell you! I swear that thing’s got to be almost ten inches.”