Courting Trouble

Wow. Anne started smiling then, her tears ebbing away, and reached up for him, kissing him fully, in a way she’d wanted to for a long time. She could feel him reaching for her with his kiss, too, with the urgency of his entire body. When he released her, he eased her into sitting on the couch, and sat down next to her, brushing uneven bangs from her forehead.

“What happened?” Matt asked, managing a concerned expression despite a beat-up cheek. “This is crazy. You’re alive?”

“First off, you can’t tell anyone. This is the worst-kept secret in the world, and I can’t risk it getting out to Kevin. He thinks I’m dead.”

“Kevin. You mean this guy they’re looking for, on the news? Satorno? Is that why you changed your hair?” Matt listened while Anne told him the whole story, and when she had finished, he remained in stunned silence for a moment before he spoke. “You took a risk coming here. Why did Bennie let you?”

“She doesn’t know, I snuck out of her house. You’ve been asking me out for a year, I figured it was time to say yes.” Anne couldn’t look at him without seeing his injury, and close-up it was worse than she thought. The gash rent his cheek and fresh blood filled the cut. He might even need stitches. Anne was an expert. “What happened to your face?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Why not?”

“It’s privileged.”

“How can that be? A privileged fistfight?”

Matt waved her off. “Forget it. Why did the police think you were—”

“A privileged fight would be a fight with a client.” Anne thought a minute and arrived at the answer with a start. “It was Bill Dietz! He hit you, didn’t he?”

“He didn’t mean it.”

“That asshole, I knew it!” Anne flashed on the Bill Dietz listings. No assaults, except the one tonight on his own lawyer. So she had been right about the rage in Dietz. “Why’d he hit you?”

“This isn’t confidential, so I’ll tell you. But we have to observe certain boundaries here. He is my client.”

“You’re loyal to him? You should fire his ass!”

“It doesn’t work that way.”

Right. “Well, it should. So what happened?”

“We were at my office, after the dep.” Matt paused again. “I hate to tell you this. It’s not unethical, it’s just stupid, and this is the beginning, where I tell you only the good stuff about me.”

The beginning. Anne liked the sound of it. “Just tell me.”

“Well, Bill said something I really didn’t like, and no, I’m not telling you what it is, so don’t start asking me”—he wagged his finger at her—”and I told him so. Then he told me not to talk to him that way, that I was only his mouthpiece, which is such a stupid term, and then he hit me. I still can’t understand it.” Matt touched his wound gingerly. “He didn’t mean to cut me, but when he threw his punch, he had on a big college ring and that did it. He felt worse than I did. He apologized, and so did Beth. They offered to take me to the hospital.”

“Oh, what a guy. A full-service client.”

“The Dietzes are really nice people.”

“The Dietzes are lying scum.”

“No way. Gil’s the liar.”

Anne sighed. “Matt, you’ve gotten to be friends with them, and it’s clouding your judgment. Dietz has issues. I wouldn’t be surprised if he abuses his wife. Normal people don’t have physically violent reactions. He socked you for something you said.”

“It doesn’t mean he beats his wife. He loves Beth. He would do anything for her.”

“So would you, and you have. You’re her lawyer—and his!”

“I don’t know anybody who doesn’t want to punch out a lawyer. And half of them are lawyers! Maybe you’re the one who’s gotten too close to your client. You just don’t like the Dietzes.”

“But they’re extorting money from an innocent man. They’re taking down his company and ruining his chance for IPO. Chipster is one of the most successful—”

“Anne?” Matt reached out and touched her arm. “Let’s not talk about the Dietzes, or Chipster, anymore. I liked what we were doing before.”

“Come on, what did Dietz say to you? Just tell me. I’m dying to know.”

“No! I will not tell opposing counsel anything my client tells me!” Matt turned serious. “You’re getting paranoid, and I don’t blame you, but we can’t keep talking about the Dietzes. Agreed?”

“You can’t blame a girl for trying.”

“I can and I do. And I’m still pissed about that stripper thing.”

“You’re less fun than I thought.” Anne pouted as Matt’s arms slipped around her shoulders. She sank deep into the couch’s cushy pillows, then felt a hardness against her hip. Oops. “Hold on, wait a minute.” She unclinched enough to extract the revolver from her waistband and set it on the coffee table on top of his scribbled notes.

“Jesus!” Matt edged away, shocked. “Where did you get that?”

“It’s Bennie’s.”

“Is it loaded?”

“Of course. You can’t shoot anybody if it’s not.” Anne edged over to Matt and touched his arm, but he kept staring at the gun.

“Does it have a safety?”

“What’s a safety, big fella?” she whispered, planting a soft kiss on the good side of his face.

“A safety’s the thing they have on guns so they don’t go off.”

“I’m kidding. It’s a revolver, so it doesn’t have a safety.”

Matt recoiled. “Will it go off?”

“It can’t. You have to pick it up, aim it at somebody you don’t like, and pull the trigger.”

“Well, point it away or something. I can’t relax with it aiming at us.”

“Fine.” Anne took pity on him, reached over, and spun the gun so that its barrel had a clean shot at the entertainment center. “I think everything will be okay now, unless the gun decides to shoot your DVD player. Now, if you kiss me like you did a minute ago, I can forget about what a big baby you are.”

“You liked that?” Matt grinned down at her, pulling her closer, and the part of his face that wasn’t injured went soft. “God, you’re so beautiful it’s scary.”

“No, not really.” Anne pointed impulsively at her scar. “Attractive, huh?”

“So what? You got nothin’ on me right now.”

“That’s it? ‘So what?’” Anne blinked, nonplussed. “I was a freak, at birth. I have a scar, and unlike yours, it’s permanent.”

“It’s not a scar, it’s a target, and I think it’s not big enough.” Matt covered her mouth with his, kissing her softly, then again, slowly, overcoming her shame with each kiss. She kissed him back, letting him lead her away from herself and her fears. She was careful with him, too, going slowly so she didn’t hurt his wound, getting to know him better, with a deeper kiss.

She eased back onto a sofa covered with his papers and felt him pressing onto her, her body warm with his weight. She ignored the crackle of Xeroxed cases under her and didn’t give a second thought to which precedent he was citing. She didn’t even try to peek at his laptop screen later, when he reached over to turn out the lamp.

Mental note: Some people have to choose between making love or making war, but lawyers can do both.

Nobody was on the sidewalk at dawn Sunday morning, and only a few light trucks and vans rumbled by, hauling ice, tables, and tents for the city’s festivities. Anne hurried from Matt’s house through the streets of Olde City, happy and reenergized, after a night with a man who loved her. She couldn’t say she loved him yet, but she was very much in deep like, and it was a slippery slope.

She picked up the pace, keeping a hand near her messenger bag so the revolver wouldn’t fly out. Okay, she wasn’t a model of firearm safety, and she wasn’t wearing underwear either. She hadn’t had time to find it. She had