Mr. Hall Takes a Bride Page 8

  He watched as Alicia raised her chin proudly. “I don’t have to go to talk to Joe, I know exactly what he’ll say. That if he accepts the plea bargain, he’s telling the whole world that he did it. But he didn’t do it and he wants his kids to know that.”

  Noble, Jordan thought. And very foolish. The man was playing Russian roulette with his life. “Even if it means the difference between being out in two years or ten? If not more.” It all depended on the judge they drew. “How are his kids going to feel then, with daddy doing a long haul in jail?”

  Her expression told him that she preferred to look on the positive side. “But if you take the case, Mr. Hall, my brother won’t have to do any time. You’ll prove he’s innocent.” Her smile was warm and filled with hope. “I know your reputation,” she told him. “Sarajane told me you were going to be working here, taking Jenny’s place and I immediately looked you up. Your bio on your firm’s Web site says that you’ve never lost a case.”

  No, he hadn’t. But the words in themselves were a heavy burden. Because he’d never lost a case, he had a great deal of confidence in himself. However, because he’d never lost a case, there was a part of him that was holding its breath, waiting for that first time to finally occur. That shoe to drop. Hoping it wouldn’t, yet fearing it eventually would.

  This was no time to give in to idle mental speculation or, worse, self-doubt, he told himself.

  Besides, if she had that much faith in him, the least he could do was to cloak himself in more of the same and do what he did best for her.

  Win.

  He nodded. “All right, Ms. Juarez, I’ll take your brother’s case.”

  “Oh, thank you, Mr. Hall. Thank you,” she cried.

  Jordan doubted if he’d ever heard that much gratitude infused in a voice before. When Alicia opened up her hands, he saw that her fingers were almost red. She’d been clenching her hands that hard. Praying that hard? he wondered.

  And then he saw her open her purse and begin to rummage through it. Was she about to show him some kind of proof she’d been holding back? More likely, she was going to show him pictures of her brother, or better yet, her brother’s children. But he was already on board, there was no need for that.

  He was about to stop her when she said, “I don’t have much,” Alicia dug further into her purse, then surprised him by taking out a fistful of dollar bills. “But I can pay you on the installment plan. From now until the end of time,” she added with a rueful smile.

  He felt oddly touched. Jordan gently pushed her hand back.

  “This is a free legal-aid clinic,” he reminded her. There couldn’t have been more than thirty, forty singles there, he mused. Did she moonlight as a waitress? Were those her tips?

  “Yes, but you don’t come free,” she countered. It was obvious that she really had done her research, up to and including what he charged by the hour. More than she made in a week, he was certain.

  “I do when I’m here,” he assured her. “House rules.”

  “But what if the case continues after you have to go back to your firm?” She glanced around to see if she could locate her friend, but failed. “Sarajane said you were only here for three weeks.”

  “We’ll work something out,” he promised. Jordan gave her an encouraging smile for good measure and then leaned forward across his desk, pushing a pad and pencil toward her. “Now, if you tell me where they’re holding your brother, I can go see him this afternoon and start the process.”

  Alicia wrote down the name of the jail where her brother had been held since the arraignment, then pushed the pad back to him. Impulsively, she leaned forward and threw her arms around his neck for a moment, relief and hope all mingled together in the one quick gesture. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

  Jordan smiled, more to himself than to her. She had no idea what kind of a leading line that was, he decided. The woman was genuinely naïve—and sweet. “We’ll think of something—after your brother’s free.”

  Alicia rose to her feet. She took a deep breath. “I like the sound of that. You were right—” she addressed the words to someone behind him “—he is good.”

  He really didn’t have to turn around, but he did anyway. Sarajane was behind his chair. Her sudden appearance really didn’t surprise him. Since he’d gotten here, she’d been doing that, materializing like Casper, in this case, the not-so-friendly ghost.

  He was, however, a little surprised by the testimonial. “You said that?”

  “I believe in being supportive and encouraging whenever possible,” she informed him crisply, her expression flat—until she looked at her friend.

  Sarajane’s lips curved then in a wide smile even though she was a little hurt that Alicia had kept this from her even as she had asked about Jordan. She’d never put the two together, that Alicia was asking not out of curiosity, but out of need. As friends, she’d just assumed that if something was wrong, Alicia would have told her. Obviously, she’d assumed wrong.

  She had to be getting back. Alicia pulled her purse to her.

  “I won’t take up any more of your time,” she told Jordan. “But that’s my cell number.” She pointed to what she’d written at the top of the page. “If you need to ask me anything, if you need anything at all,” she stressed, both her gratitude and her concern etched on her face, “just call, night or day.”

  He nodded, folding the paper and tucking it into his pocket. “I’ll be in touch,” he promised as he watched the nurse walk away.

  “In touch, or touching?” Sarajane asked with more than a tad of sarcasm, her voice low so that it would go no further than the small space around Jordan.

  He looked at her without bothering to hide his amusement. “Testy,” Jordan commented. “After all, she’s your friend.”

  “Exactly.” Sarajane looked at him pointedly. “And very vulnerable right now.”

  Even though there was a roomful of people around them, he took a second to look at her. His expression gave nothing away. “Not like you.”

  His words halted her in her tracks. Sarajane didn’t know if he was being serious, or if he was just saying that sarcastically to irritate her.

  For a split second, it almost felt as if the man could see through her. Through the bravado she kept tightly wrapped around her, straight down to her two failed relationships. When he’d kissed her, had he somehow detected—

  No, that would be giving him too much credit, she thought. The man wasn’t a superhero with extraordinary powers, he was, from what she’d heard, an exceptional lawyer with an equally exceptional as well as insatiable taste for the ladies. She needed to keep that in mind at all times—and to keep her emotions, not to mention her lips, in line.

  “Not a bit like me,” she agreed.

  With that, she quickly turned to the next person who was waiting and indicated that she take the chair Alicia had just vacated.

  Jordan sat down again, bracing himself. The impatient man who had tried to huff and puff some attention his way was now sitting next to Harry’s desk, bending his ear. Sarajane was bringing him a woman whose eyes were red-rimmed from crying.

  It was going to be a long afternoon.

  The frown etched lines into Robbie Logan’s thirty-seven-year-old face as deep as the words he was reading on page three. The air of despair permeated the office from which he lovingly ran the Children’s Connection Day Care Center.

  He knew that Nancy had told him not to let the stories get to him. His wife had even gone so far as to tell him she didn’t want to see any copies of the Portland Gazette in their house.

  But not buying the newspaper wasn’t going to change anything. It wasn’t going to make the stories go away.

  It seemed like nothing really made the stories go away. They’d abate for a while, then return in another form. To plague him.

  Robbie sighed, scrubbing his hands over his face. He pushed the newspaper away. It fell on the floor. For the time being, he left it there.

  Why now?r />
  Why again?

  A hopeless frustration filled him. He was trying so hard to do the right thing, to be the right person and it wasn’t as if it was easy, not after everything he’d been through. But it seemed to him that every time he thought he was finally going to make it, finally get on track, life had a way of throwing obstacles in his path, derailing him. Making it harder for him to surmount the wreckage that he’d always felt was his life.

  It hadn’t always been this way, he tried to remind himself, there’d been good things, even in the beginning. Especially in the beginning. But at times it was hard to hang on to those good memories, especially when there were so many bad ones waiting to cancel them out, dark clouds overtaking the white.

  It wasn’t all that long ago that he was known as Everett Baker, just another worker at the Children’s Connection, an adoption agency and fertility clinic located in Portland and heavily funded by the charitable contributions of the Logan family. Everett Baker, the adopted son of Jolene and Lester Baker, two of the most worthless, twisted people who had ever walked the face of the earth.

  Adopted son.

  The term mocked him. A more accurate description would have been kidnap victim. Lester, trying to appease his shrew of a wife, had kidnapped Robbie one day while he was playing with a friend, taking him from the loving home he’d had and convincing him that his parents didn’t care about him. That they were glad to be rid of him.

  What Lester and Jolene did was brainwash him, make him feel unwanted, unloved. Unworthy. They’d tortured him emotionally until there was nothing left of the boy he’d been.

  Nothing but that one last shred of integrity. It took a while for it to surface, buried beneath hurt and resentment, qualities that allowed him to be duped by Charlie Prescott, the man who was really behind the black-market-baby schemes and the IVF mix-ups. Charlie preyed on him, preyed on his insecurity and pretended to be his only friend, all the while determined to use him to help with the kidnappings and the blackmail he was trying to pull off in order to feather his nest.

  But in the end, that shred of integrity won out, causing Robbie to thwart Charlie’s plans and turn him in to the authorities.

  Nancy had been the reason for that. She’d seen in him the man he had the potential to be. The man he could have been if he hadn’t been kidnapped. She was the one responsible for his finally having the courage to seek out his family, people he’d felt himself unworthy of, and tell them who he really was—their long-lost son and brother. Nancy had been his source of strength then.

  Nancy was his source of strength now, but that didn’t change anything. That awful story was digging up everything in his past, laying the blame for the supposed oversight in the Sanders baby case at his doorstep. Whoever was writing this story was calling him a former baby kidnapper. They were implying all sorts of awful things, making him out to be a monster instead of the victim that he actually was.

  He knew what that meant. There’d be trouble at the Children’s Connection. Donations would be pulled, people would stop coming. And he would be the one to blame for that.

  Or so it would look.

  He’d survived his kidnapping, survived the unfair charges that had been brought against him the first time around; he’d been proven innocent. He’d managed finally to feel worthy of being who he actually was: Robbie Logan, oldest son of Terrence and Leslie. Granted it wasn’t easy to erase all the years that had gone by, but he was taking baby steps in the right direction.

  But all that was going to stop, to change, because of this latest set of allegations.

  This latest set of lies.

  A man could only take so much before breaking and he had taken more than his share. Robbie sighed, pulling over a large sheet of paper. He picked up a pen and began writing.

  He owed it to Nancy to get them away from all this unfair, undeserved attention. God knew she deserved better even if he couldn’t seem to merit it himself.

  After a few minutes, he put down the pen and looked over the words he’d hastily scribbled on the back of a form letter the department had sent out when the story first broke. Ordinarily, he would run something of this nature past Nancy before putting it into play. He never made decisions without consulting Nancy. She was the more level-headed one. But this time, he’d made his own decision.

  Because of Nancy.

  She wasn’t one to complain, but he knew this had to be hurting her. Hurting her because she loved him—God only knew why. And hurting her because she was associated with him and people talked. He didn’t want anyone thinking badly of his Nancy.

  So he signed the letter, even though his heart ached as he did it. Dropping the pen again, he rose from his desk. He needed to tender his resignation from the Children’s Connection now, before it got any worse.

  Before he lost his nerve.

  Chapter Eight

  “Ready to go?” Jordan asked Sarajane as he watched her lock the front door.

  For his part, he’d shut down his computer twenty minutes ago, when he’d begun ushering the last supplicant out the door. That had taken about ten minutes, and the dialogue of the last eight he couldn’t really remember. But now, finally, after what seemed like a full thirty-six hours, it was the end of the day.

  More than that, it was the end of the week and he really felt like celebrating that. One week down, two left to go. It couldn’t happen soon enough for him. This place, he’d decided, was nothing if not a real downer. He’d never had to deal with so many downtrodden people in his life. People whom life seemed have to either forgotten or run over. People who were turning to him—and Advocate Aid—as their last hope. God knew it was hard not to let it get to him after a while.

  One or two of the people he had seen this week had almost, albeit unintentionally, made him feel guilty about the silver-spoon life he’d led and, in fact, was still leading.

  Almost, but not quite.

  After all, it wasn’t as if he was living off his parents’ money the way he knew that some people in his circle did. He worked for a living. Worked damn hard at times. Whenever a case demanded it, he put in long hours to see it through to its ultimate satisfactory outcome. If his clients were the kind who could afford to pay top dollar for the best, well, that wasn’t exactly his fault now, was it?

  More like his good fortune, Jordan mused, packing up the notes and the file he was going to be reviewing sometime this weekend, during a lull. Joe Juarez’s file. The lawyer who’d been appointed to handle the man’s case had been more than happy to relinquish everything to him.

  Obviously Tim Seger was someone else who wasn’t exactly thrilled about handling pro bono cases. He’d gone to see the lawyer after he’d had his rather quick first interview with Joe Juarez this afternoon. There’d been a flicker of recognition in the attorney’s eyes. After Jordan had introduced himself, the other man had been almost nauseatingly eager to be of any help. Jordan knew it was because of the firm he was associated with. That, and his reputation. Seger had confided that he hoped someday to work for a firm like Morrison and Treherne, if not that actual firm itself.

  In a pig’s eye, Jordan mused. His firm hired only the top of the graduating classes from the country’s best law schools.

  And being the best had landed him here, he thought darkly.

  Yes, he wanted to celebrate getting out of this dingy, claustrophobic storefront office by stopping at one of his customary haunts to help eradicate the stench of desperation that seemed to be hovering around him, thanks to the people he’d interacted with.

  How the hell did Jenny stand it? he wondered. How did she manage to maintain her good mood, not to mention her sanity?

  But then, he supposed that was what made her Jenny.

  Jordan thought of just mumbling goodbye to Sarajane and ducking out. But he supposed playing the part of a selfless do-gooder had gotten to him a little. He couldn’t just let the woman go off on her own and stand at that damned bus stop again, not after what had happened on Monday. Afte
r running for two days, her vehicle was in the shop again.

  That’s what came of buying a used car, he thought. The damn thing had been pronounced “fixed” by what he could only assume was an idiot of a mechanic. She’d driven it to work Tuesday afternoon only to have it refuse to even attempt to start on Thursday evening. She’d probably maxed out her credit card to pay for it, too. He’d remained with her, waiting for the tow truck. The truck had taken her car back to the mechanic where it now currently resided, just this side of limbo.

  Sarajane crossed back to her desk and got her purse. The dialogue, she thought, was undoubtedly useless, but she felt honor bound at least to try to talk him out of taking her home. Besides, she really didn’t like feeling indebted to him.

  “You don’t have to do this, you know.” Closing the deep bottom drawer with her knee, she slipped her purse strap onto her shoulder.

  He was already on his feet, heading for the back door. “Please, Sarajane, it’s Friday. I don’t feel like going through this dance again. You need a ride, I have a car, it’s not that far out of my way.” Following her out, he waited until she locked that door and turned on the security system.

  She turned to face him, turning up her coat collar at the same time. It was unusually brisk out tonight. “Far enough.”

  Habit, as unconscious as it was automatic, had him taking her elbow and directing her toward the parking lot. “So I’ll earn a merit badge that much faster.”

  She stood beside the passenger door as he unlocked it. “You could never qualify for a Boy Scout.”

  He held the door opened for her—his very action, he felt, a contradiction to the kind of behavior she was obviously ascribing to him. “And why not?”

  She got in and waited until Jordan had rounded the trunk and gotten in on his side. “Because you’re much too wicked.”

  Jordan stopped turning the ignition key and looked at her. “Excuse me?”