Page 9 of Legal Passion
Because then he’d lost all control.
* * *
How the hell had Hillary lost control like that? Her face was hot just thinking about the night before. She lifted one hand to her cheek and slapped it lightly.Snap out of it.
She had already spent too much time thinking about it. Too much time thinking about Stone Michaelsen, even before last night.
“Is that your pre-court ritual?” a male voice asked.
She whirled around to find her boss standing behind her in the hallway outside her office. He startled her so much that she nearly dropped the key she held near the lock.
She must have looked stunned because he added an explanation. “Slapping yourself in the face? Is that the way you get fired up?”
“Uh...” She couldn’t think at all right now.
He chuckled. “Or maybe you use it to wake up.”
She didn’t need to wake up since she hadn’t even slept. “I’m awake,” she assured her boss.
The guy was short, nearly as short as she was, and he had the little man–Napoleon complex thing going on where he had to be in control at all times. More a dictator than a leader.
“Good,” he said. “You need to be wide awake to take on Stone Michaelsen.” He cursed. “To take on any of those slick bastards from Street Legal.”
He’d taken on Stone before and had lost just as she had. But his biggest loss was when Ronan Hall had represented his ex-wife in his recent divorce. Hillary kind of thought he’d deserved to lose that one, though. He was a bit of a lech.
Even the way he was looking at her now made her want to button up her jacket to her neck. But the button across her breasts was already straining. She needed to lay off the candy bars for dinner. Salads from now on.
From the way he was watching her, Wilson Tremont didn’t seem to mind that she was carrying a few extra pounds, though. He had to be nearly twenty years older than her thirty years. Maybe he had even more years than that on her.
It was hard to tell with how he dyed his hair black and sprayed on a tan. He could have even been forty years older than she was.
“We need to win this case,” he reiterated.
We? He wasn’t sitting in on it with her—probably because he didn’t want another loss on his record, especially with an election coming up. But she wasn’t going to lose.
“And that damn alibi,” he continued, “is going to make it tough for you. It was hard to even get the grand jury to indict with that.” He had been surprised, and maybe also disappointed, that they had. He’d probably lost a potential supporter for his upcoming campaign.
But Hillary had had the murder weapon, which belonged to the defendant, and CSI had found only his prints on it. Hell, he’d had it locked up in a case to which he was the only one with a key. And the house staff and friends of Bethany’s who’d testified that she had a lover had provided Byron’s motive for killing his young bride. So Hillary had had enough for the indictment. And now she had more than enough to win.
But she didn’t want to say that to her boss, or Wilson Tremont would take the case from her and try it himself. A win against Stone Michaelsen would look good for him.
But Hillary wanted that win for herself.
Despite last night...
No. She couldn’t think about last night right now. Or at all.
“What are you doing here?” Wilson asked as he glanced down at his watch. “Aren’t you due in court soon?”
She nodded, and her mouth went dry at the thought of facing Stone so soon again. But she was a professional. She could do it—if only they had kept everything professional between them the night before.
But that was all his fault. He’d kissed her first.
...and she’d kissed him back.
But she hadn’t been able to help herself. He’d tasted so damn good, better than any candy bar she’d ever eaten.
“I—I needed to get something that I left here last night,” she said.
