drab office.
She fisted a handful of the pink locks and closed her eyes for a split second. When she opened them back up, they glimmered with resignation. Again, her bottom lip jutted out in a pout that not only did I want to bite, but that also made the custom fit of my suit pants much tighter.
“Okay, besides my hair, what else do I need to do before the preliminary hearing? How do I make myself respectable and law abiding?” She sounded so disgusted by the idea, I had to bite down another chuckle.
“The hair, and dress appropriately for court. Something conservative but not too stuffy. You’re young and you look fairly innocent. You’ve got your entire life ahead of you. We want to play that up. Besides that, do what the arraignment judge told you—stay away from the boyfriend and try and keep yourself out of trouble.”
She stiffened across from me and whispered, “Ex-boyfriend, and I told you, I don’t ever want to see him again.”
“And I told you that you aren’t going to have a choice.” I looked at the watch on my wrist and was shocked to see that I had been talking to her for well over the time I had blocked out in my schedule to meet with her. It felt like it had only been a handful of minutes. “I understand where you’re coming from. I wouldn’t want to see the person that got me into this kind of mess either, but you’re the one that walked in here claiming you want to do something right. That you don’t need someone to hold your hand. It’s up to you to put the guy that hurt you, the monster that threatened those people with a gun and tried to rob a place that means so much to your family, away for a very long time. It is a huge step in the right direction, Avett.” I got to my feet and she followed suit. “I have another client waiting on me, so we need to wrap this up. I’ll be in touch. I’m sure the D.A. is going to want to talk to you about their case against the boyfriend. I should have a date for the next hearing soon.”
I reached out to shake her hand and almost jerked my palm away when our skin touched. A jolt shot up my arm. It took all my restraint not to rub it like I had brushed up against a live wire.
She pulled back and curled her fingers into her palm, like she was trying to hold on to the vibrant electricity the contact between us had created. When we touched, my blood felt charged, stimulated in a way I’d never felt before.
“I look forward to hearing from you.” She delicately cleared her throat, making her way to the door of my office. Once she was there, she paused with her hand on the knob and turned back to look at me over her shoulder. “Quaid.”
I looked up from the file I had turned my attention to and lifted my eyebrows at her in question. “Yeah?”
“I’m neither as young nor as innocent as you seem to want to believe I am. If you want to sell that to a judge and jury because you think it will help keep me out of jail, then I’ll play the part. But you need to recognize that’s not the reality of the situation.” She was out the door before I could formulate a response.
I called Pam to let her know I needed a few minutes to prep before my next client meeting, rocking back in my chair as I tried to recover from Hurricane Avett. She was a tiny whirlwind of destruction and I couldn’t seem to keep up with the different directions she was blowing my emotions in. I’d never encountered anyone like her. I couldn’t remember ever dealing with someone as real, as open with their faults and failures, as Avett seemed to be. I’d never met anyone as reckless with their own fate as she was. Something about that was really intriguing. So was the gauntlet she threw down on her way out.
Obviously she was technically young, much younger than me at least. When I was twenty-two I had gotten back from the desert and was starting college for the first time. I wasn’t as untried as a lot of men in their early twenties but that had more to do with the way I was forced to grow up than it did with fighting for my country. Still, the difference between what I knew then and what I know now was huge, so yes, Avett Walker was young, regardless of her assurances that she wasn’t.
As for her being innocent … I had her criminal record in front of me, so I knew she wasn’t an angel. However, there was something in those wild eyes of hers that seemed so gentle and soft. How innocent she may or may not be was still very much up for debate.
I was getting ready to call Pam and tell her to bring my client in when the phone on my desk rang as I was reaching for it. I knew from the caller ID that the man on the other end was Orsen McNair, the man who had hired me and who was the McNair in McNair and Duvall, the founding partners of the firm. I liked Orsen, appreciated that he gave me a shot right out of law school and the fact that he had stood by me during the divorce when Lottie had done her best to drag not only me but the firm through the mud. I owed the guy a lot considering my pedigree wasn’t as polished and shiny as most of the attorneys hired right out of school. I also recognized I had made it to this point in my career based on my own work ethic and own skills at knowing how to read and work a jury. I wanted my name on the sign along with Orsen’s and I hadn’t been shy about letting him know that.
“What’s up, old man?”
There was a raspy chuckle on the other end of the phone and I could hear his chair creak under his weight. “I hear we’re in the business of representing punk rockers now.”
I frowned, even though he couldn’t see me, and glared at Pam through my closed door. “Where did you hear that?”
“Come on, Quaid. You know the ladies in this office gossip like that’s what they get paid to do. Pam couldn’t wait to tell Martha about the girl with pink hair, saying she was locked up with you in your office for over an hour. Told her that she seemed flushed and agitated when she finally came out. You have something you want to tell me, kid?”
I closed my eyes and rubbed my temples in vicious circles. “Nothing to tell, Orsen. She’s a new client. She was referred by another client. The pink hair is a minor issue, but I already advised her that it needs to go before court. If she seemed upset or worked up in any way when she left my office, it was because I told her she was going to be the State’s star witness against her boyfriend. She’s not happy about it. Pam has a big mouth.”
“Pam is worried about another gold digger getting her claws into you.”
The reminder of what I had been through, what I had put the firm through, hit its mark. “She doesn’t need to worry about that happening ever again. I’ve told you a hundred times I’ve learned my lesson.”
Another rusty-sounding chuckle made its way across the phone line. “You need a willing woman that knows how to give a man what he needs and that looks good while she’s doing it. In fact, you should find yourself one and bring her to the partners’ holiday party that will be here before you know it.”
I grunted and forcibly turned my mind away from the image of walking into Orsen’s opulent Belcaro mansion with a pink-haired hurricane on my arm. The partners would lose their minds and not just because she was a client. McNair and Duvall had an image to upkeep, a reputation to uphold, which meant everyone that represented them was expected to look and act a certain way. On the outside, Lottie was the perfect lawyer’s wife, even though she was corrupted and the worst kind of wife on the inside. It made me cringe that I was even comparing the two women. They weren’t cut from the same cloth at all; in fact, I was pretty sure Avett came from some kind of custom textile that only existed to create her. “I’ll see what I can do. My caseload is a nightmare at the moment, so that hasn’t left a lot of time for much else.”
“There’s always time for the right kind of woman, kid, especially after you wasted so much time on the wrong kind of woman. Pencil me in for a lunch meeting early next week. You can catch me up on what you’re working on, including the punk rocker.”
He barked a good-bye, hanging up before I could tell him pink hair did not automatically equal someone being a punk rocker. Orsen was old school and set in his ways. He wouldn’t recognize the hair as another facet of Avett’s spirited and untamed personality. I wasn’t lying when I told her I liked it. It was different and suited her, but I was practical enough to know that it had to go, even if I disliked the idea almost as much as she did.