Two Years Later Read online

  “I’d let him get through opening statements,” Royce agrees.

  “Okay then. I wait at least two days.” I press my hand to my belly and start to tear up. “He’s going to be an amazing father.”

  Lauren smiles and hugs me. “And you’re going to be an amazing mother.”

  ***

  I stop by my favorite salad spot and grab lunch. I don’t feel sick. I don’t crave anything. By two I’m sitting at the island in the kitchen eating and googling pregnancy articles. It’s making me crazy to think of all the things that could go wrong which most would say are really statistically not a big deal. But Reese will read them just like me now and they will feel big when he’s in a high-profile trial like this. I don’t know what to do. I’m still hyper-focused on pregnancy articles when the door opens. I quickly clear my browser and hold my breath, waiting for Reese to appear. In a few beats, he’s entering the kitchen, and he’s stealing that very breath I was holding, just by being him.

  He rounds the counter and comes to me, cupping my face. “I need you. You know that right?”

  “Good. You’re stuck with me for life but why are you saying that?”

  “Because I do.” He smiles and brushes hair from my eyes. “Which is why I’m going to keep you.”

  I laugh at his mimic of my declaration from this morning. “When did you decide this?”

  “Just reaffirming my vows, sweetheart.”

  I have to tell him. I need to tell him. I have to tell him. “Reese—”

  His cellphone buzzes and he glances at the screen. “The team is headed upstairs. Lori and Cole are coming too but you’re the one I need input from. My opening is a mess. I need you to listen to it.”

  “I’ve read your opening. It’s brilliant. You even said it’s brilliant.”

  “And then audio of my client fighting with her father, she’s accused of killing, leaked.”

  I blanch. “What?”

  “You heard me. An audio was leaked to the press.”

  “Oh no. How bad is it?”

  “Bad. The kind of bad that might have kept me from taking this case.”

  “You think she’s guilty?” I ask, knowing how much he hates defending people who are guilty.

  “I still don’t, but this is going to make it tough to win.”

  “Strike it out of evidence,” I suggest.

  “This judge is tough.”

  “And you’re the best of the best.”

  His lips curve. “And to think I started out as the asshole who cut in front of you in the coffee line.”

  “Thankfully now you have manners.”

  The doorbell rings and he laughs before pressing his cheek to mine, and whispering, “I love you, Cat.” And then he’s walking away and I can barely breathe again. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to be a good wife right now but that’s what I want. I want to do the right thing. I have to do the right thing.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Cat

  Reese heads to the door to greet his team, our team really because this is our life. We do everything together. We deal with all things together. I’m a part of his work and he is a part of mine. I barely breathe without this man and yet I’m having his child and I can’t tell him. I know I can’t. Not yet.

  “Hi, Cat.”

  I blink to find Elsa standing in the doorway, looking blonde and beautiful as usual in a blue suit. She is beautiful and also with my husband all the time, but never once have I worried about them together. How many women would feel that confident with a man as successful and gorgeous as my husband? But I do.

  “Hey, Elsa,” I greet. “I hear there are some bumps.”

  “Have you heard the recording?”

  “No. Bad?”

  “Yeah. It’s bad. Your husband is going to have to work magic in his opening statement because of course, the jurors heard the tape. It’s everywhere.” She heads to the coffee pot, comfortable here, and why wouldn’t she be? Reese loves to hold game planning sessions here. I love that he loves to come home to find his magic with his cases.

  I twist around to face her. “That doesn’t seem like the opposing counsel. Reese could move to delay the trial to allow a fair jury to be selected.”

  “Cat.”

  I turn to find Reese in the archway between the kitchen and the hallway. He motions me forward. Richard, another attorney on Reese’s team, walks in and heads to the coffee pot. “Hey, Cat,” he says, shoving his longish brown hair from his eyes, his red tie at half mast.

  “Hey, Richard.”

  I join Reese in the hallway and we walk to the office down the hallway. He sets a tape recorder on the mahogany desk and leans on the edge next to it. “I want to play the leaked phone call. Ready?”

  “Hit me with it,” I say, sitting down in one of the wing back chairs as he punches play.

  Dana Warren, my husband’s client and heiress to the Warren Empire, starts to speak: “He’s mean. He’s so mean. He says horrible things. He does horrible things. The world would be better without that man.”

  “I understand wanting someone dead,” a male voice says. “You know I do. You know what I’ve been through.”

  “Only you escaped. I can’t escape.”

  “You can always walk away,” the man says.

  “Not until the day he’s dead and he might even have provisions to enslave me after that. The money will be my prison. I don’t think I want it anymore. I don’t want it.”

  “No one walks away from that kind of money. When he’s gone, you’ll have control.”

  “He’ll find a way to make sure I don’t. I need to just—"

  The tape cuts off. “Where’s the rest of it?”

  “I don’t have it and Dana swears that’s when she said she loved her father. She says she said she couldn’t hurt him but it hurts that he could hurt her.”

  “Who was the man?”

  “Reginald Hicks, her boyfriend, and he says that he didn’t leak the call. He doesn’t know how anyone got it. He’s willing to testify to the rest of the content of the call.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  “I do.”

  “Delay the trial. You have to get a new jury, maybe a new location outside the city.”

  He gives a shake of his head. “She won’t let me.”

  I blanch. “What? Why?”

  “She wants it over. She says she’s considered suicide from the stress of it all.”

  “Please tell me you got her help.”

  He scrubs his jaw. “I’m trying. I want you to talk to her.”

  “Of course,” I say. “I’ll do what I can. You believe her right? The suicide thing isn’t guilt?”

  “I’m sure there is guilt there but not for the murder. There’s no evidence but her inheritance to convict her. The man was evil, which I’m going to show in court. He destroyed people and hurt people just because he could. I don’t think her feelings were abnormal.”

  “I need to see if I can rework my column for tomorrow and include this.” I grab his phone. “I have to call my editor and you need one hell of an opening statement.”

  “Now you know why I say my opening sucks.”

  “Yeah. It’s obsolete now.” I punch in Melanie, my editor’s, number.

  “Cat,” Melanie greets. “Why did I know I’d be getting this call? Yes, you can have time to rework tomorrow’s column.”

  “How long?”

  “I need it now.”

  “I need two hours.”

  “You can have one.”

  “Two it is.”

  “Cat—”

  “You know you want that voicemail covered and you know readers are going to look to me to see what I say. My husband is the defense counsel.”

  “Fine. Two.”

  We disconnect and I look at Reese. “I have to work on my column and you have to work on your opening but for both, I told Elsa, this wasn’t the opposing co
unsel. They’d—”

  “—wait until, mid-trial when we couldn’t move the trial. Agreed. So who the hell did this?”

  “The boyfriend. It has to be him.”

  “It’s too obvious,” he argues.

  “Right. It is. And yet sometimes that’s what makes things less obvious.”

  “Don’t point a finger at him,” he says. “I need him on the stand, on our side.”

  “No one walks away from that kind of money, he said. He’s the boyfriend. Were they engaged? Because maybe he was afraid she would walk away and he’d get screwed.”

  “And I plan to go there with him on the stand, but I need him to say the right things, to help my client, first. But if he killed the father, why release the voicemail?”

  “He got spooked,” I suggest. “He’s afraid he’s on the radar. He wants his freedom more than the money, which ironically is what your client said on that call.”

  “Maybe. And I do have Walker Security investigating him. The good news though is that I can show dozens of people who wanted that man dead and at least three who threatened to kill him.”

  “I need to write.”

  He gives a nod. “You know the drill. Don’t give away my position.”

  “I’m just going to make sure your client isn’t convicted before the trial over that call.” I stand up and Reese shoves off the desk, and the next thing I know, I’m pressed against it instead of him.

  “Do you know what I want right now?”

  I arch a brow. “Coffee?”

  “You.”

  “You can’t have me the way you’re talking about right now. We have people in our house.”

  “Who will have no idea that I’m fucking my wife.”

  “Reese.”

  He kisses me, a deep, drugging, hungry kiss. “Reese.”

  “I’m on edge, sweetheart. Like I haven’t been for a trial in a very long time.”

  My hand goes to his jaw. “You’re going to kill it. You always do.”

  “Tell me that when I’m inside you and I might believe you.” His mouth closes down on mine again, and there’s this dark need in him, this possessive hunger, and I wonder if some part of him senses I’m holding something back. I don’t want him to feel this.

  I sink into the kiss and I forget about our guest, my column, and his trial prep. There is just me and my husband, the father of our child that he doesn’t even know about yet. He doesn’t know, but in some way, here, now, I want him to feel how much I want this, how much I want to tell him how much I want him. He turns me and presses my hands to the desk. “Toe off your sneakers,” he orders.

  I do it and I don’t even know how my pants are unzipped and unbuttoned, but he’s tugging my jeans down my hips and in a flash I’m naked from the waist down. He turns me to face him, his fingers tangling in my hair, and then he’s kissing me again, drinking me in, drugging me with his need, and God, I know he senses I’m holding back. I know. I’m sure of it. I have to fix this, but in this moment there’s only one way to communicate and that means fucking him the way he needs to be fucked.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Cat

  Reese shrugs out of his jacket, his starched white button down still managing to stretch across his broad chest, and even as I watch him, I know what he wants and needs. I know this man. I know those moments when he’s on edge and fucking is all there is to him, and that works just fine for me. He makes love to me. He fucks me. He does everything just right. Right now, he needs to fuck me. He needs to know that I’m all in, that I’m right here with him. He needs to know that whatever he thinks he senses right now, it’s not a division between us. It’s a secret, yes, but it’s a special secret. It’s a gift I want to share with him so very much and I can’t. Not now. Not yet. Not before his trial.

  I reach for his pants and stroke a line down the thick ridge of his erection and his mouth comes down on mine, a possessive, devouring kiss, and I meet every lick and stroke he gives me, until he’s lifting me to the desk, shoving down his pants, and without any preamble, pressing inside me. “God, woman,” he murmurs against my lips before he cups my now naked backside and lifts me, one of his hands settling between my shoulder blades.

  It’s a wild frenzy from there. Us kissing. Us moving. Him thrusting into me, pulling me down onto his thick erection, sending a ripple of sensation spiraling through me. I lose myself in his touch, in the feel of his hands on my body; the sound of our breathing, our moans. We are wild, in need of more, and more, and Reese shackles my waist, urging me backward, forcing me to trust him to hold me up, and I do not believe this is an accident. Reese and I are too connected. He knows when something is off between us. He doesn’t just need to fuck and feel close to me. He’s testing our trust, and I don’t even hesitate to give it to him. I’m one hundred percent into the passion between us and the play of our bodies. I push into every pump of his hips, holding onto his wrists and nothing else while he holds onto me, driving into me. The urgency between us becoming hard and fast, and he sits me on the desk, leaning into me to the point that I’m forced to settle on my elbows. His mouth comes down on mine and after a deep, consuming kiss, he’s thrusting into me again, his head buried in my neck.

  I tangle my fingers into his hair, wrap my leg around his hip and I’m right there in that sweet spot that this man takes me to all too easily. “Reese,” I breathe out at the same moment that he lets out a deep, guttural moan and shudders against me. I tumble with him and the room spirals into nothing but this man, his delicious, earthy scent, and the feel of him all around me. We collapse into reality and he drags me to a sitting a position.

  “You okay?” he asks, brushing hair from my temple.

  “My husband just fucked me on a desk. How can I not be okay?”

  There are voices outside the door—Lori and Cole’s voices—and my heart leaps. “Reese,” I plea urgently and he hands me a tissue, fixes his pants and then sets me on the ground.

  We don’t speak again until I’m dressed but the voices fade. “I can’t believe we just did that with guests in the house.”

  “It’s our house,” he says, fitting me between him and the desk again. “Why do we feel off?”

  And there it is. Proof of how connected we are. Proof that he reads me like no other human being ever has. “We’re not off. Not even a little off.”

  “Then what do I feel?”

  I don’t want to lie to him. I won’t lie to him. “You feel me fretting with you over this case,” I say, which is true. It’s why I can’t tell him about the baby now. I stroke his jaw. “I know how much pressure you put on yourself but you always win.”

  “Always winning becomes expected,” he says, “and I want to live up to that expectation, but that, too, becomes more pressure.” It’s a confession I know that he would share with no one but me. “I feel that pressure,” he adds.

  “Added to by the fact that you and Cole are now partners and neither of you have ever lost a case. You don’t want to blow that track record for the firm.”

  He presses his hands to the desk on either side of me and looks skyward before fixing me in a turbulent stare. “It shouldn’t be about my record. It should be about my client.”

  “It is,” I say, pressing my hand to his chest, his heart thundering beneath my palm. “It is about your client. Your perfect record staying perfect is about your client. It means you win this one, for her and you. And the firm. You pick your cases well, but if they aren’t a challenge, anyone could win. They can’t, but you can.”

  He cups my head and kisses me. “I love you for believing that, sweetheart, especially since I know you’d call me on a poor performance.”

  “There will be no poor performance,” I say. “That’s not you.”

  He settles his hands on his hips. “You’re right. I’m going to win. I’m going to go make sure the team knows that. Do you want me to bring you your computer before I get started with them?”

 
; “No. I’ll grab it and say hello to Lori and Cole.”

  He heads for the door and I grab his arm, laughing as I wipe lipstick from his cheek. “You just love wearing my lipstick.”

  “I love wearing you,” he teases, winking at me before he opens the office door.

  We head into the kitchen where Lori and Cole are talking in hushed voices. “Hey you guys,” I greet, joining them at the island to scoop up my computer. “I can’t stay. In light of the leaked phone call, I’m off to rework my column for tomorrow.”

  Lori’s eyes go wide and she shoves her brown hair out of her eyes, pressing her hands on the counter. “What are you going to write? What’s the angle?”

  Cole motions to Reese and the two of them step out of the room. “You know I never know until I write it. Any thoughts?”

  “You know that I don’t like to mess with your creative process, not unless you need me.”

  Do I need her? Yes. I need to talk, but not about my work, about the baby, only I can’t. I’ve already told Lauren and Royce about the baby. I adore Lori. She’s such a good friend, but it feels like a betrayal to Reese to tell yet another person about the baby. And Lori and Cole are like me and Reese. They tell each other everything. I’m not having Cole know about this and Reese be in the dark.

  “I’m good,” I say, and the truth is, I am. I’m in love. I’m married to my best friend and we’re having a baby. “I’ll join you guys to strategize in a few.”

  I hurry away and return to the office, another smile playing on my lips as I think about me on that desk, and Reese on top of me. I sit behind that very desk and begin to edit my column. My new beginning reads: By now, most of you have heard or read the transcript of the leaked phone call between Dana Warren and her boyfriend. The interesting part of this call to me wasn’t that Dana wanted her father dead. It’s that she was willing to walk away from the money. The question becomes, who was afraid she really would?

  I frown and delete everything I just wrote. I can’t put the boyfriend on edge and risk turning him against Dana. Reese already told me that he needs him on his side. I start again: By now, most of you have heard or read the transcript of the leaked phone call between Dana Warren and her boyfriend. I’ve dissected this conversation, and I don’t believe any of us can put it into context until we learn more but I was struck by one detail: She was willing to walk away from the money and yet we’re to believe she killed for the money? Those two things contradict each other to such a point that I’ve written them down, as hot points I want addressed in the trial.