Return To Rose Cottage: The Laws of Attraction

The misery in her eyes and the hopelessness in her voice were enough to break his heart.

“Of course you can,” he assured her. “It’s one mistake, Ashley. That doesn’t render you incompetent.”

“Another person nearly died because of me,” she insisted fiercely. “If the police hadn’t had him under surveillance…” She shuddered at what could have happened. “I’m as guilty as Tiny Slocum.”

“I know that’s how you must feel, but you’ll see it differently in time,” he said, wondering even as he spoke if that were really true. Ashley clearly had a conscience that ran deep. It was one of the most admirable things about her. How would she ever be able to reconcile what had happened with her vision of justice? With her vision of herself?

Worse, he knew that there wasn’t a damn thing he could say that would set her mind at ease.

6

“You can go now,” Ashley told Josh after he’d fixed them both dinner, then sat there patiently, his gaze unrelenting, until she’d eaten almost every bite. His presence, undemanding though it was, was wearing on her nerves. Sooner or later, he was going to insist she talk about Tiny Slocum.

Right now, though, he merely grinned. “Trying to run me off before I make you finish your peas?”

“You caught me,” she admitted, trying to match his light tone. “I hate peas.”

He gave her a perplexed look. “Then why were there six cans of them in the cupboard?”

“Because Melanie was here first and she stocked the cupboards. She loves peas.” Ashley grinned halfheartedly. “Maggie won’t touch them, either. Maybe I should consider wrapping them up and giving them to Melanie for Christmas.”

Even as she spoke, there was a semi-hysterical note in her voice as she realized that it was entirely possible that she could still be here at Christmas, that her firm might not want her back after all, now that her sterling reputation for being on the side of the angels had been tarnished. Her three-week break, which she’d barely become resigned to, could turn into months of unemployment and indecision.

Given that realization along with everything else, it was a miracle that she could find anything at all to joke about. Ever since she’d seen that news brief in the paper, she’d felt as if all the air had been sucked from her lungs. She hadn’t said a dozen words all during dinner. It was little wonder that Josh was reluctant to leave her, even though he had to have lost respect for her, knowing how badly she’d been deluded in the Tiny Slocum case. She was sure Josh would bolt the instant he thought she was calm enough to be left alone. That would be that, the end of a budding…what? Friendship? Relationship?

She regarded him thoughtfully. “Why haven’t you run for the hills by now?” Maybe the answer to that would tell her what she needed to know. Maybe it would help her to define whatever was going on between them. She liked everything in her life sorted into nice, neat cubbyholes. Up till now Josh had defied all her attempts at categorization.

But rather than giving her the direct, uncomplicated answer she’d hoped for, he regarded her blankly. “Why would I do that?”

“You’ve seen unmistakable evidence that I’m a terrible judge of character,” she explained. “That might be okay for the average person, but it’s a lousy trait for an attorney. I don’t even have any respect for me anymore.”

“Come on, Ashley. I’m not about to confuse a mistake you made with who you are,” he told her. “You’re a good, decent person.”

“You haven’t known me long enough to be sure of that,” she protested, determined not to listen to anything positive when she was mired in this down-on-herself mood.

“It’s obvious,” he contradicted just as emphatically. “Otherwise this wouldn’t be tearing you up the way it is. You’d chalk it up to experience and move right on.”

She stared at him in shock. “How could I do that? How could anyone?”

“Attorneys do it all the time,” he insisted. “They passionately defend people they know or suspect to be guilty because that’s their job. You said yourself that someone at your firm took over Slocum’s defense.”

“You don’t seem to have a very high opinion of lawyers,” she observed.

“Just a realistic one, quite possibly a better one than you do at the moment,” he said, then waved her off when she would have interrupted. “Let me finish.”

“Fine. Go right ahead.”

“Maybe a good attorney will try to encourage a plea bargain if the evidence is overwhelming, but ultimately his duty is to act in the best interest of his client, guilty or innocent, and to offer that client the competent defense that is the client’s constitutional right, correct?”

“Yes,” she admitted.

“You thought you were defending an innocent man. It turned out you were wrong. It’s not the same thing as deliberately setting out to free a guilty man.”

Ashley refused to be placated. “It feels like the same thing. It feels as if I’m as responsible as Tiny Slocum was when he beat up yet another woman.”

Josh looked her in the eye. “How do you think the jurors who acquitted him are feeling right now? Do you blame them? Do you think you duped them?”

She closed her eyes and sighed. “No, not deliberately. Tiny fooled all of us. I’m sure they’re as sick at heart as I am.”

“Add in the fact that the prosecutor and police messed up. Seems to me as if there’s plenty of blame to go around. You don’t need to take it all onto your shoulders.” He scooted his chair closer and skimmed a finger along her bare arm. “And lovely shoulders they are, too. Much too lovely to have all this weight heaped on them.”

Ashley shuddered at his touch. It would be so easy to allow him to distract her, just for a little while. It would be wonderful to have his mouth on hers, his hands exploring her body, to feel him inside her, to give in to sensation, to let him take her hard and fast until she came apart. It was exactly what she’d wanted last night, and it was even more appealing now.

But she wouldn’t ask him to stay, not again. Her pride wouldn’t allow it, even if her common sense wasn’t telling her that the timing was no more right tonight than it had been the night before. If anything, it was worse. They would both know she was only using him to forget her troubles. That was a truly lousy thing to do to a man who’d been nothing but thoughtful and supportive.

She grabbed Josh’s hand and pressed a kiss to his knuckles. “You should go,” she said quietly. “I need some time to think about all this.”

“I’m not so sure you should be alone,” he said, his expression uneasy. “If you don’t want me here, how about calling one of your sisters?”

She shook her head. “Maggie and Melanie have already listened to me moan and groan enough about all this. They came straight up to Boston to get me after the trial. If you think I’m in bad shape now, you should have seen me then. I was totally impossible and unreasonable. They threatened to have me committed if I didn’t take some time off.”

“Really? Good for them.”

She frowned at him. “Don’t tell me you’re a proponent of the tough love approach, too.”

“I’m a proponent of love in all its forms,” he retorted genially. “Now let me do these dishes, and I’ll get out from underfoot.”

“Josh, I don’t think I’m so shaken that I can’t wash a few dishes. Doing something totally mundane and mindless will be good for me,” she said, anxious for him to be gone before she changed her mind and threw herself at him.

“If you say so,” he replied.

“Go. Do something fun and don’t spend one second worrying about me. I promise I’ll be here in the morning, bright-eyed and ready to go fishing.”

He studied her intently for a moment, then nodded. “Okay, then, you win. I’m out of here. Call me if you change your mind and decide you need company. It doesn’t matter what time it is. I’m not on any sort of schedule right now. I can be back here in a few minutes.”

“I will,” she promised.

He leaned down and gave her a hard kiss that stirred regret that she’d already decided to send him on his way.

“Just something else for you to think about,” he teased lightly. “I don’t want you wasting your whole night on useless guilt.”

After he’d gone, Ashley touched her lips. It had been a helluva tactic. As stressed-out as she was about things in Boston, there was a whole lot going on right here to give her pause. One of these days she’d have to figure out why she was so attracted to a man who seemed to have an endless supply of time on his hands and no noticeable goals that she’d been able to discern.

Josh wasn’t happy about leaving Ashley alone, but the stubborn set of her jaw had told him she wasn’t going to give him any alternative. Better to go gracefully than add to her stress by digging in his heels and staying put. Besides, he had some thinking of his own to do. Maybe this was the perfect opportunity. Ironically the questions plaguing Ashley were not that much of a stretch from those bothering him.

Not that he’d gotten a murderer off recently. He swam in a different legal pond, mostly with the corporate barracudas. It was cutthroat law of a different kind, and he’d pretty much concluded months ago that he wasn’t suited for it. He was always hired to represent one side, but he was too damn good at seeing both sides of the picture, especially in some of the high-stakes mergers and acquisitions he handled. His evenhanded judgment made it a lot harder to go for the jugular, even when that was precisely what he was being paid to do.

People who hired Brevard, Williams and Davenport could pay for the best representation available. More and more lately, Josh had wanted to be on the side of the little guy who couldn’t afford the big guns. Maybe this was his chance to do just that. He had no financial obligations, no family to consider. If he was ever going to dramatically alter his income and lifestyle, now was the time.