Julie James - About That Night

“Would you say that you resent the fact that they kept putting you in segregation?”

Kyle saw where she was going with this—already thinking ahead to what a defense attorney might bring up on cross-examination. “I have no ax to grind against prison guards, counselor. I understand they were just doing their jobs.”

“Good,” she said with a nod. “Now tell me about Quinn.”

“Quinn’s a different story. That guy is one mean son of a bitch.” He watched her. “You’re actually writing that down?”

“Yes. And feel free to say it exactly like that to the grand jury.”

Kyle was glad she’d brought that subject up. She may have been confident about her case, or at least she seemed to be, but he had his doubts. “You really think the grand jury is going to believe what I have to say?”

“Sure,” she said with a shrug. “I believe you.” When she finished writing, she looked up from her legal pad and saw him staring at her. “What?”

It was nothing, really, that she believed him. Just words. “You’ve asked a lot of questions about me. Now it’s my turn.”

“Oh, sorry. But that’s not how this works,” she said sweetly.

“It is this time, counselor, if you want to keep me sitting in this booth,” he replied, just as sweetly.

She shook her head. “You are just as annoyingly cocky as you were nine years ago.”

“Yes.” Kyle’s gaze fell to her lips. “And we both know how that turned out.”

Much to his surprise, she actually blushed.

Well, well. Apparently the unflappable Prosecutrix Pierce could be…flapped after all.

Interesting.

She recovered quickly. “Fine. What’s your question?”

Kyle thought for a moment, wondering where to start. He decided to go right to the heart of the matter. “Why did you leave San Francisco?”

Rylann raised an eyebrow. “How do you know I lived in San Francisco?”

“On a scale of one to ten, how pissed would you be if I said that I hacked into the DOJ’s personnel records and did some poking around about you?” He whistled when he saw her look of death. “Okay…ixnay on the ex-con humor. Relax, counselor, I Googled you. From what I could tell, you had a good thing going back in California.”

He saw a flicker of something unreadable in her eyes.

“I felt like it was time for a change,” she said simply.

Yep, definitely a story there.

“Does anyone actually buy that excuse when you say it?” Kyle asked.

“Of course they do. It’s the truth.”

“But not the whole truth.”

She acknowledged this with a slight smile. “Perhaps not.” She readied her pen once again. “Now. Back to your testimony.”

“All business once again,” he teased.

“In this case, yes. If the past is any indication, you and I only get along in about eight-minute stretches and”—she checked her watch—”uh-oh, our time is almost up on this one.”

Kyle laughed. She was just so frustratingly, amusingly self-assured. “One last question. Then you can ask me anything you want.” He paused and locked eyes with her. “Admit that you liked that kiss.”

Her lips parted in surprise. “That wasn’t a question.”

“Admit it anyway.”

As she held his gaze, the corners of her lips turned up in a smile. “I told you then. It wasn’t bad.”

Then she clicked her pen once again. “Now. Back to your case.”

THE REST OF the interview went smoothly enough, as far as Kyle could tell. Rylann spent a good twenty minutes firing questions at him about the night Quinn threatened Brown—whether he’d actually seen Quinn talking (yes), whether he was sure he’d heard the threat (also yes), whether he was making the whole story up because he was an egomaniac attention hound desperate to be in the limelight again.

He paused with his coffee cup midway to his mouth at that one.

Rylann smiled mischievously. “Just a little prosecutor humor.”

There was a brief awkward moment when the check came and they both reached for it at the same time. His fingers softly grazed hers as their eyes met. “Sorry. Instinct.”

After she paid the bill, they walked out of the diner and stood momentarily underneath the L tracks.

“I plan to bring the matter to the grand jury next week,” Rylann told him, raising her voice to speak over an approaching train. “I’ll call you as soon as I have the exact date and time you’ll be testifying.”

She extended her hand in farewell, and Kyle closed his hand around hers.

“This is a good thing you’re doing, Kyle,” she said. “Just remember—”

The train roaring directly overhead made it impossible for him to hear her. Kyle gestured to his ear, shaking his head. She stepped close to him and put her hand on his shoulder as she stood up on her toes to speak in his ear.

Her breath was a soft caress on his neck, her voice low in his ear. “—Don’t screw it up.”

He turned his head so that they were eye to eye, his lips mere inches from hers. He said nothing for a moment, and neither did she, and he became very aware of the catch in her breath, the warmth of her hand on his shoulder.

Kyle felt a sudden urge to pull her closer. He’d teased her in the diner about their kiss, but unless he was wholly off his game after those four months in prison, the vibe he was getting from her right then was very real. If he bent his head just the slightest, he could brush his lips over hers. Find out if she tasted as good as she did in his memory.

“How are we doing on that eight-minute stretch of getting along?” he asked huskily.

Rylann stayed where she was at first, their lips still so close. Then she cocked her head and met his gaze. “Time’s up.”

She pulled back from him and turned and walked away, the roar of the L train fading as it passed by overhead.

BACK IN THE safety of her office, Rylann shut the door behind her and exhaled.

That had been a little too close for comfort.

As a lawyer, there were certain lines she would never cross, and getting involved with a trial witness was definitely one of them. She and Kyle might exchange a few quips here and there, there may even have been a reference to a nine-year-old kiss, but as long as she needed his testimony in the Brown matter, that was as far as things could go.

She ran her hands through her hair, collecting herself, then took a seat at her desk. Welcoming the distraction of work, she checked her messages, first her voicemail and then she turned to her computer. She had just begun to scroll through her unread e-mails when she saw something that caught her completely by surprise.

A message from Jon.

There was no subject, and she hesitated to click to the message, not wanting its contents to show up on her preview pane. First, she needed a minute to process this unexpected development.

She checked the calendar on her desk, realizing that in one week it would officially be six months since she’d had any contact with him. By mutual agreement, they had decided not to call or e-mail each other, thinking that would make it easier on both of them to get over the breakup. Yet here he was, changing things up.

Normally very decisive in her actions, Rylann caught herself debating her next move. Part of her was tempted to delete the e-mail without reading it, but that seemed too bitter. And though she certainly had mixed emotions about the fact that Jon had reached out to her, she was pleased to realize that bitterness wasn’t one of them. Plus, heaven forbid he was e-mailing to tell her some kind of bad news. In that case, she’d feel horrible if she never replied.

But beyond that, there was a small part of her that was curious. Did he miss her? As practical minded as she liked to think she was, the idea that there might be a man somewhere out there who was pining for her, potentially wracked with guilt and angst over the demise of their relationship, a man who’d spent hours pouring his heart and soul into this sentimental missive sitting unopened in her inbox between an e-mail from a DEA agent she worked with—subject: “Need a subpoena ASAP”—and an e-mail from Rae—subject: “OMG—DID YOU WATCH THE GOODWIFE LAST NIGHT???”—was heady indeed.

So she clicked on the message.

Rylann read the entire e-mail, then sat back in her chair to contemplate its meaning. Given that this was their first correspondence in nearly six months, it would be tempting to read too much into Jon’s every word. Luckily, he had been thoughtful enough to spare her from the rigors of that exercise.

After three years of dating, a year of living together, and six months of being apart, he’d written one word to her.

HI.

“HI ? THAT’S IT?”

Rylann grabbed another carrot stick and dipped it into the hummus plate she and Rae had ordered. “Yep. That’s all he wrote.” She waived the carrot in the air. “What does that even mean? Hi.”

“It means he’s a jackass.”

Rae had always possessed a talent for getting to the heart of the matter.

“Is this his way of testing the waters or something?” Rylann asked. “He throws out a hi to see if I’ll write back?”

“Well, for one thing, it’s a sign that he’s thinking about you,” Rae said.

The bartender returned with their martinis—between the interview with Kyle and Jon’s stupid Hi, Rylann had called for an emergency post-work happy hour at a bar in between her and Rae’s offices.

She chewed her carrot stick, musing over Rae’s comment. Then she shook her head. “You know what? I’m not going down this road again. I’ve already spent plenty of time analyzing and second-guessing every word of my last few conversations with Jon.” That had been stage one of her six-month plan to get over the breakup—a stage that had gone nowhere.