Two Wee Drams of Love, page 5
Nor would he. Waiving formal discovery, where the court oversaw the fact-finding phase of the case, was ill-advised.
“Discovery shouldn’t be a problem,” Jane said, zipping her carpetbag closed. “I get the sense your client has control of all the household accounts and bills, so most of the documentation should come from her.”
“You’re shorter today. Shorter than usual.” He liked that, though he also liked how she prowled around in her spiky heels, a family law superheroine in pursuit of any villains bent on world domination.
“I’m short every day.” She plucked Dunstan’s glasses from his nose and handed them to him. “Are these for show, or do you really need them? Glasses make a great courtroom prop. I wore flats because it’s raining, or sleeting, or something.”
She scooted onto the conference table and kicked out a foot with a slipper-looking black shoe on it.
Dunstan busied himself tidying papers into no particular order rather than examine her feet. He’d touched her ankle bones, found them slim and sharp, her calf sturdy, and—
He needed to get out more, and not to the Knightley brothers’ poker nights. “Sensible of you, I’m sure, to forego the heels. When do you expect to file your motions for discovery?”
“In the library the other day, and at the restaurant, did you touch my—touch me on purpose?”
The question was oh-so-casual and completely unexpected, as the best cross-examination could be. A world of possibilities lay in that question, most of them bad.
“If I say yes, you’ll have me up before the bar association for sexual harassment, sent off to naughty-lawyer classes and begging to keep my license, or at the very least, you’ll move to kick me off this case.”
She might also charge him with assault for the hell of it, assault being any harmful or offensive touching. The state’s attorney was a right bastard who’d delight in handling the case too.
No sense of humor at the prosecutor’s office, though the first time, in the library, Dunstan hadn’t entirely intended to take liberties.
And Dunstan hadn’t earned nearly enough of the Almquist retainer. Then too, if Jane knew her client’s hands were financially dirty, forcing Mrs. Almquist to change lawyers would obscure that difficult reality nicely.
A wonderful legal analysis of the facts, far too late to do him any good.
“James Knightley claims you meet some very nice people in naughty-lawyer classes,” Jane said, scooting off the conference table. “Not that he’s attended.”
James Knightley was damned good-looking, also shrewd. He was the local expert on corporate law, which meant he could—and did—date the entire rest of the
Damson County Women’s Bar Association with little chance of a conflict of interest.
“Let me ask you a question, then, Counselor,” Dunstan said. He unhooked Jane’s raincoat from the rack and held it open for her. “Was your wee foot trying to evade my hand? On either occasion?”
Because another hypothesis could explain why she’d bring this up now:
Jane DeLuca, spikey-heeled terror of the Damson County family law bar, needed to get out more too.
* * *
Dunstan Cromarty had the knack of holding a lady’s coat so she didn’t have to contort herself into it, but could instead stand more or less passively while her outerwear was slipped up her arms and draped over her shoulders.
The sensation was…lovely and novel, and that Jane allowed this courtesy probably answered any questions about her wee fute and whether she’d complain to the bar association about a moment or two of slap and tickle.
“Dunstan, where’s your staff?” Jane asked, because she and opposing counsel were apparently to have a somewhat awkward conversation about boundaries and professionalism.
About which her feet were not happy at all.
“My staff is larking about Lancaster County on some quilt tour. They asked for the day off weeks ago, and I usually manage well enough without them. My paralegal’s only half time, and my secretary leaves at three thirty to pick up her kids.”
Knowing he was a good boss did nothing to help Jane maintain a professional distance. “Why aren’t you in Scotland, Cromarty?”
“I often think of going home, but I won’t do that until my coffers will allow a successful transition to practice there. When you’re a solo practitioner, and all the overhead falls to you, you make little financial headway.”
He said this standing behind Jane, as if he didn’t want her to see him admit homesickness, or the weariness that came with being a solo practitioner.
“Tell me about it,” Jane said, stepping away. She cracked the curtain over the window and saw the Almquists giving each other a final hug beside a blue SUV, Cal’s briefcase at his feet, his hand braced near his wife’s shoulder.
“Jane, about your question?”
She could tell by his tone that the awkward discussion would be blessedly brief. He’d meant nothing, he hadn’t been flirting, it wouldn’t happen again. No harm, no foul.
No more lunches without cutlery, no more speculating about what Dunstan Cromarty looked like wearing only his glasses.
“You have very pretty feet,” he said, which was an interesting opening statement, but whatever else he might have said was lost in a great sneeze that he silenced by pinching his nose closed.
“Didn’t your mother tell you not to do that?” Jane asked, shouldering her carpetbag. “You’re supposed to let a sneeze out, not trap it, because it can do all kinds of—Dunstan? Cromarty?”
He stood bent forward a few peculiar inches at the waist, one hand braced on the conference table. His expression had a listening quality, like a juvenile delinquent who’d just knocked back a fifth of Jim Beam might listen for the approach of sirens—or death.
Jane set her bag on the table. “Dunstan, is something wrong? You’ve gone pale.”
Even his lips were pale, and his eyes suggested his innocent client had just been given twenty to life.
“Are you having a heart attack?”
He eased out a breath. “Nay. Not a heart attack. It’s m’ back.” He commenced to swearing softly, carefully, such as a man does when even breathing too deeply promises crippling pain.
Jane caught a few “fookin’s,” a “shite,” and some other words that were too heavily accented for her to make out.
“Do we need to get you to urgent care?”
Because she was alone with him—drat and damn all quilt tours—and she couldn’t leave him like this. Fortunately, she had neither court nor client appointments for the rest of the day, though she had work aplenty.
“I’ll be fine. Some heat, some rest, a wee dram or two, and I’ll come right. I always have before. You can run along now.”
He hadn’t moved, hadn’t shifted his posture a single millimeter.
“Run along? And leave you the oil can? You won’t be that lucky. I let you pay for lunch, you’ll let me drive you home.”
He wanted to argue. Jane could see the words fighting to get past his white lips, could see pride and pragmatism having a badass rumble, with common sense holding all bets.
“I’ll get your briefcase,” she said. “What else do you need?”
“I’ll be—”
“You’ll be laid up for a couple days, but if you tell me which files to grab, you can at least stare at them until the wee drams work their magic. If you argue with me on this, I’ll tickle you.”
“Shameless tactics,” he muttered, as he began a slow, shuffling, half-bent progress toward the door. “The Almquist file will do. Throw in the Fosters’ agreement too—that one’s on my desk. Grab Baxter while you’re about it, and maybe Ostergard, as well.”
“You’re taking a couple days at home, Dunstan, not setting up a home office. Where are your keys?”
Progress to the parking lot was slow and silent, with Jane carrying both her carpetbag and Dunstan’s battered briefcase.
“I’ll not be able to get out of that,” Dunstan said as they approached Jane’s powder-blue Prius. “And gettin’ in won’t be a treat, either.”
While she sympathized with his misery, Jane had rather enjoyed his bad language. “What do you propose?”
“My vehicle will do.”
His vehicle. The small parking lot held three other cars, all with a dusting of wet, yellow oak leaves and the occasional oversized snowflake. “The Camry?”
“The Tundra.”
A Tundra was a…truck. A big, muddy black truck with the tailgate down and testosterone tires such as Jane could have neither lifted nor afforded. “You can get into that thing?”
“I’ll haul myself up by the handles. You’ll have to drive.”
First, she had to wait as Dunstan by groans and inches shifted himself up into the passenger’s seat. He settled back slowly, slowly, never seeming to reach a place of comfort. Jane slammed his door closed and came around to the driver’s side.
Getting in was undignified, and the seat was way too far back, but the view was lovely.
“I’ve always wanted to drive a truck,” she said, fitting the key into the ignition and cranking the engine. “I like sitting up this high, and these seats are cushy. Is this the seat heater?”
She hit two buttons, cranking his up to high and putting her own at medium. Everything on the dash was fairly self-explanatory, and the truck steered beautifully.
So it was completely by accident that Jane bumped a rear wheel over a curb pulling out, causing Dunstan to curse for nearly half a block in a language she didn’t recognize.
* * *
Please, Almighty Merciful God, do not let Wallace be playing turd hockey on the kitchen floor when I hobble in the door with Jane DeLuca at my side.
“You haven’t passed out on me, have you?” Jane asked as she shut the truck off. “Your eyes are closed.”
“I’m gathering my strength.” For any number of ordeals.
“Don’t you move until I’ve rappelled down the cliff side,” she said, scrambling out of the driver’s seat.
She was so little, she had to more or less jump out of the truck, while Dunstan… He moved one leg, then the other. He paused to let the agony bounce around in his body, then used the handles to haul himself sideways, and so it went, one indignity, one torment at a time.
Jane shouldered their various bags, while Dunstan caught sight of Wallace sitting in the living room window, a marmalade ball of gloating feline.
“Oh, you have a kitty! What’s his name?”
“Fat Bastard. The door’s nae locked.”
She opened the door and stood back so Dunstan could totter past her, then she hauled their bags in and closed the door. “Is an unlocked door prudent? You’re fairly isolated here.”
“I’m hoping somebody will come by and steal the cat.” Who, in an unprecedented display of survival instinct, had neither recently used the litter box, nor undertaken any hockey games that Dunstan could see.
It being a hallmark of Wallace’s hockey seasons that cat litter was sprinkled from one end of the downstairs to the other.
“I love these old farm houses,” Jane said, shrugging out of her coat. “They have charm.”
Dunstan stretched out a casual hand and braced himself against the nearest wall, a compromise between his tattered dignity and the urge to crumple in a screaming fetal heap three steps inside the door.
“These old farm houses have heating bills. If you’d like to take my truck back to town, I can have one of the Knightleys give me a lift tomorrow.”
He didn’t attempt a smile, neither did he try to get to the sofa, a good five yards, three cursing fits, and four prayers off across the living room. Carpeted yards, though, which would make crawling ever so much more comfy.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Jane said, and damn the woman, she spoke with the patient amusement of a small female with a perfectly functional sacroiliac. “The first order of business should be to get you into a hot shower, if your bad back is anything like my grandpa’s. Is your bedroom upstairs?”
“I’ll be adorning the sofa for a wee bit before attempting anything so ambitious as a shower.” Though a shower…His muscles stopped pounding on his tailbone long enough to beg for that hot shower even before he opened his last bottle of twenty-five-year-old Glenmorangie single malt.
“So you can’t make it up the stairs. Does this level have a bathroom?”
He didn’t like this line of questioning one bit. “Aye.”
“Then what are you waiting for?”
Disaster for Scotland, to put the situation mildly. “I’m waiting for the floor to open up and swallow me whole. I’ll not allow you to undress me, Jane DeLuca.”
Not like this, please God. Not like this.
“So we’ll put you in the shower with your clothes on. Would you leave me to suffer when my back hurt so badly I couldn’t stand the thought of sneezing again?”
He crossed himself with the hand that wasn’t anchored to the wall. “You’re a cruel woman to mention such a thing. There’ll be no sneezing of any kind for the foreseeable future.”
And not to put too fine a point on it, his diet would be rich in fiber, once he could stand in the kitchen long enough to pour milk on cereal. Wallace chose then to strop himself across Dunstan’s legs.
“He knows I canna kick him.”
Jane inserted herself under Dunstan’s outstretched arm, which was about three seconds away from shaking. “Lean on me. Anybody who names a cat Fat Bastard has already abused the animal. I assume the facilities are down the hall?”
Miles away, of course. Why didn’t old farm houses have bathrooms in the foyer?
“Second door on the left.”
He tried not to lean on her—and failed. Jane was surprisingly sturdy, though, and they covered the distance to the bathroom with only a bit more swearing. Then she abandoned him—abandoned him—with an admonition to get off as much of his clothing as he could while she retrieved sweats from his bedroom upstairs.
Sometimes, when his back went out, within twenty minutes, he could tell he was due for only a light penance. A dose of painkiller, time lying prone, a movie or two, and all could be forgiven, provided he took no chances for several days.
This was shaping up to be a less accommodating episode.
Dunstan undressed in the bathroom, his clothes piled into a heap at his feet, for he could not bend down to hang them up and couldn’t balance on one foot long enough to hook them with his toes—he knew all the tricks. He could manage to brush his teeth and tend to other standing rituals, and by the time he heard a tap on the door, he was sporting only a towel about his hips.
“It’s nae locked.”
“Good,” Jane said, pushing the door closed behind her. “I found sweats, but wouldn’t a kilt be easier? You don’t have to step into it.”
She brandished a black work kilt Dunstan wore when waging his endless war with the yard.
“That’s a fetching ensemble you’re wearing yourself, Ms. DeLuca.” For she’d changed into gray sweats and a green T-shirt that said If it takes three years to get there, it had better be one helluva bar.
“I always have gym clothes with me,” she said, turning on the bathtub taps and holding her hand under the gushing stream.
Maybe she frequently found herself sleeping in places other than her own bed? Not a cheering thought.
She fiddled with the taps, and soon, water streamed from the shower head in steamy abundance. The difficulty before Dunstan daunted him: He had to raise each foot high enough to step into the shower and shift his weight without falling.
“In you go,” Jane said, showing no indication of absenting herself. “If you think I’ll let you risk a slip-and-fall now, you’re dumber than I thought.” She stepped closer and put her arms around Dunstan’s bare torso. “Lean on me, and no heroic measures, because I’ll probably topple with you, and I will sue you if I injure anything other than my pride.”
He leaned, he tottered, he leaned some more, and finally, finally, found his way to the soothing, hot spray. Jane whisked his towel off and flipped the Royal Stewart plaid shower curtain closed in the same nanosecond, but the bliss of the hot water was so great, Dunstan almost didn’t care what she saw, or what she thought of what she saw.
Almost.
* * *
Jane hadn’t looked, truly she hadn’t, but she’d seen anyway.
She paused outside the bathroom door, back braced against the wall as images of a naked Dunstan Cromarty danced through her head—and a few points south.
A long, tapered back that flowed into a taut, male tush; defined musculature on every limb; the proverbial washboard abs; and a chest that really deserved to be immortalized on the covers of a few romance novels.
And as for the rest…
She contemplated the rest of him, at length, as it were, until the shower stopped. In the ensuing silence, reason rescued Jane from considering career suicide: Dunstan Cromarty wasn’t interested in her. That’s what his pretty fute speech would have been about, had he been allowed to finish it.
“Do not even think of getting out of that shower, Dunstan Cromarty,” Jane called, as she opened the bathroom door. Fragrant steam beclouded her senses, along with the knowledge that a big, wet, hurting Scot stood on the other side of the shower curtain.
“Pass me the towel, Jane, or I’ll scandalize us both.”
Let the scandalizing begin. “This one’s dry.” She slid a fluffy red bath towel around the end of the shower curtain. “Towel off as best you can, and then I’ll pass you the kilt.”
He didn’t manscape. He probably didn’t even know what manscaping was, and Jane hoped he never learned.
“I’ll have that kilt now.”
The damp towel was thrust forth. Jane made the swap. “Do you feel any better?”
“Aye, a bit. I’ll break out the heating pad, take a few pills, and settle in for the rest of the day. This will pass.”
Jane leaned against the wall, trying not to picture Dunstan Cromarty fastening on a kilt. “Do you have court tomorrow?”
“Nay, thank Christ. I wouldna answer for the consequences if I had to listen to Elvin Gregory’s bleating when my back’s troubling me. No court until next week. You?”
