Sweetest Kisses: A Single Kiss Part 33

Louise glanced at her file as she posed the question, noting charges of soliciting and possession of drug paraphernalia. Mr. Matthews's client was thin to the point of emaciation, nervous, and pretty in a used-up-too-soon way.

"Your Honor, the State suggests a sentence of ninety days on each count, to be served consecutively," the prosecutor said.

Consecutively? Six months of enforced sobriety from the defendant's drug or drugs of choice wouldn't hurt the woman, though incarceration wasn't likely to lead to recovery.

"Mr. Matthews, what evidence was taken from your client suggestive of paraphernalia?"

"A cigarette lighter, Your Honor." He hadn't stood to offer that information.

Come on, old girl. You wear this robe for a reason. "Mr. Matthews, how old is your client?"

Matthews rose this time and bent his head to confer with his client. "Nineteen, Your Honor."

"Does she have children?"

He bent his head again. "A son three years old."

"Does she have a place to stay if she's not incarcerated?"

Another whispered exchange. "She can stay with her sister, Your Honor."

Louise carried out the interrogation for a few more minutes, and each time, Matthews had to consult with his client before answering.

"Mr. Matthews, do you know anything about your client?" Other than the amount of the retainer she paid you?

Matthews's expression turned disgusted, though he was trying to maintain a veneer of courtroom demeanor.

"Your Honor, with all due respect, I was retained only a couple of weeks ago, and have had limited contact with my client. The circ.u.mstances of the case-"

Louise exercised a judge's prerogative and baldly interrupted.

"She was at the jail awaiting trial, Mr. Matthews, available to you essentially 24-7. Counsel will approach the bench."

She did not make it a request. The state's attorney had the decency to look uneasy.

"Mr. Matthews, please enlighten me as to how Ms. Charles has had the effective a.s.sistance of counsel, when all she's done is plead guilty to both charges-one of which is beyond ridiculous? She's prepared to accept consecutive, not concurrent sentences, when she has no previous convictions and not even a prior charge. What in the h.e.l.l have you done for this kid?"

The state's attorney's eyes showed resignation. Louise ignored it.

"Your Honor," Matthews said, "the paraphernalia charge could get her six months alone."

"Where are your witnesses to testify that the woman smokes cigarettes? If I looked over the evidence reports, I'd probably find she had cigarettes in her purse at the time of arrest, wouldn't I?"

The state's attorney looked away now. Prudent of him, because Louise had every intention of denying at least one of the easy convictions Matthews always seemed to hand him.

"Mr. Matthews, did you do anything to help your client solve the real problems in her life? Can she read and write? Does she have a place to live? Is there a drug problem? Did you at least give her a referral for an addictions a.s.sessment? Have you done anything to prepare her defense?"

Matthews took a few huffy breaths, and Louise told herself she was getting too old for attorney histrionics. His hair was precisely parted, but greasy. His three-piece suit looked expensive, but the dress shirt he had on beneath it was wrinkled. One cuff lacked its cuff link, and dirt lay under the nail of one index finger.

"I am not a social worker, Your Honor," Matthews bit out. "I am not Ms. Charles's keeper. She has accepted the State's offer, and I have found her to be under no disability that would render her consent invalid."

Louise picked up a pen and tapped it against the family law article she took with her into every courtroom. Matthews's clients were invariably facing drug charges, or solicitation and prost.i.tution, occasionally drunk and disorderly. There was a pattern of selling his clients out to the State that was too obvious to ignore. His incompetence helped the State's conviction rates, so the prosecutors weren't about to complain.

"Gentlemen, you may return to the counsel tables."

She gave Ms. Charles a stet on the solicitation charge, putting the charges untried on an inactive docket, and dropped the paraphernalia charge, then had a short, confidential discussion with Ms. Charles in chambers. The topic, couched entirely in hypotheticals, was the nature of the retainer paid to Mr. Matthews.

When Ms. Charles left, a dozen agency phone numbers clutched in her skinny mitts, Louise made another call. An attorney in her jurisdiction had a problem with substance abuse, and her duty as a judge and member of the bar was to see the attorney thoroughly investigated and offered a.s.sistance for his problem.

Hannah's week was pa.s.sing by in a fog. She prepared her cases for the Friday docket, and she made a proper maternal fuss over Grace's pair of skinned knees on Monday night. Tuesday night it was a sc.r.a.ped elbow.

By Wednesday morning, Hannah had to admit she was avoiding Trent.

Making love with him had been the fulfillment of more fantasies and dreams than Hannah had realized she invented. He'd been tender and pa.s.sionate and caring and hot. Wickedly, wonderfully hot, and now he'd stepped closer to parts of Hannah's life she wanted to put firmly behind her.

She owed him the truth, but not at the cost of exposing Grace to risk. The only real choice was to send Trent on his way, which would be d.a.m.ned awkward when they worked together.

Also painful. Brutally painful. As would leaving the firm.

"Greetings, Stark." The man himself lounged in Hannah's doorway, arms crossed, his blue eyes traveling over her in a way that made her breath seize.

"Trent."

"You have a minute?"

"I do. Debbie has pretty much put this week's docket together, and I'm only nervous, not in a flat panic."

"But then," he said, lips quirking, "it's only Wednesday, right?"

Oh, how she loved that smile.

How she would miss that smile. "Right."

"I've come to complicate your day. But step into my parlor, where you won't hear your phone ring."

Hannah followed him across the hall. She'd avoided his office all week and hadn't even let herself walk by Mac's office.

"It's nothing major," Trent said, closing his door behind her then taking up his perch against his desk. "Just a marital separation agreement for a friend of one of James's friends, but it's a do-it-yourselfer."

"Meaning?" Hannah didn't sit down, didn't scoot up onto the desk to sit beside him, didn't even look at him. Couldn't bear to.

"Meaning it's full of holes, but I've gone over it and made notes. All I want you to do is arrange the sit-down with the client and talk her through them."

"You want me to tell her what she and her husband put together off the Internet is amateurish, full of problems, and she'd be better off hiring us for our zealous advocacy?" Hannah asked.

Trent pushed away from the bridge of his starship and came to stand beside her.

"I told myself you were busy," he said, studying her. "Told myself you weren't avoiding me, you weren't playing hot and cold. But something is bothering you, Stark, and I am not a mind reader."

His tone was not accusing, but it held something careful. A little puzzled, a little hurt. He hadn't touched her since he'd kissed her good night on Sat.u.r.day evening.

Hannah faced a choice. She could tell him Sat.u.r.day had been a mistake, and he'd retreat to the friendly, supportive position he'd occupied when she'd first come to work for him. It would be a caricature of that stance, but for her sake, and for the sake of his pride, he'd pull it off until she moved to a different department, or a different law firm.

To put Trent through that would kill her.

Somewhere along the way, she'd lost her heart to him, at least the small piece of her heart that wasn't entirely commanded by her daughter.

"Hannah?" His gaze held concern and a hint of vulnerability. "Are you trying to find a way to tell me I've blown it?"

"You haven't blown it. It's me."

Still he watched her, making no move to touch her.

Tell him. Tell him the truth. Tell him some part of the truth. This is Trent, and he cares about you, and you have to tell him...

"You didn't enjoy that shelter care hearing," he said. "I have wracked my brain, and that's the only other thing I can think of. Something about it undid you."

"Everything about it undid me."

Hannah's heart started to pound against her ribs, dread beating through her veins, while she gathered her courage and tried to speak normally. She could tell him this much and blame her inability to sustain a relationship with him on her past. In a sense, it would be the truth, but it was a truth she'd admitted to no one.

"You need to know that I was a... I was..."

Abruptly, her voice and her nerves failed her. An attorney dealt in words, she told herself, so deal, but hurt, despair, and sheer, miserable grief clogged her throat. She moved to the door, as far from him as she could get, intent on turning the lock or leaving, while the lump in her throat threatened to strangle her.

Just like Grace's father had tried to strangle her, to end her life, even as he'd planted a new life inside her.

Hannah stood at the door, clutching the doork.n.o.b behind her back.

"I was in foster care for much of twenty years-"

One sentence was all she could get out, pinned against the door, heart hammering, hating even the sound of the words that had been her unrelenting reality.

She tried again, holding up a hand when Trent took a step toward her.

"I was in foster care for most of the first twenty years of my life. I was adopted once, but my adoptive parents were killed in a car accident when I was three. Then it was one home after another, group homes, or foster homes, shelters in between. Therapist after useless therapist-"

Her lungs stopped working. She pushed words out anyway, the effort greater than pushing cinder blocks off of her heart.

"There was some neglect, but mostly I was pa.s.sed around like a bag of garbage. I was in a lot of good homes too, but by then, I wasn't any good. You cannot make me go back to that, Trent. Not as a person, not as an attorney. I will not do it. I just can't. But Friday, you made me, and I let you. I let you do that to me."

She was crying now. She closed her eyes to block out the sight of his face, not wanting to see the bewilderment and dimming of his regard for her. She would become not Hannah to him, not his Stark, but a case, a casualty, and he would be kind, and that would kill her.

"I'm so sorry." He'd moved; his voice was rough, right near her ear, and then she was scooped up against his chest and carried to the sofa. "Hannah, I am so very, very sorry. I should have known, I should have seen, I'm sorry. Forgive me."

He held her, cradling her in his lap, and Hannah's tentative grasp on her dignity shattered. She wept openly, heartrending, uncontrolled sobbing that had little to do with a single hearing, and a lot to do with twenty years of being unheard in any meaningful sense.

"Go ahead and cry," Trent murmured. "You won't cry alone, Hannah. Not while I have breath in my body." He stroked her back; he pa.s.sed her tissues; he petted her hair and whispered meaningless comforts to her while she gradually became quiet in his arms.

"I hate to cry. I hate this job for making me cry."

"You have every reason to cry." Trent's tone was fierce, but the way he rested his cheek against her hair was tender. "I never want to make you cry like this again, Stark."

When she shifted, trying to climb off his lap, he let her get only as far as the place beside him on the sofa, her hand trapped in his.

"There's more, isn't there?"

Hannah tossed a balled-up tissue into Trent's wastebasket. "There's always more."

"It has to do with Grace's father?" He was shifting into his lawyer mode, but maybe that wasn't entirely bad.

"Some of it. We don't have to talk about that now."

"I'm ready to hear whatever you're willing to tell me, Stark. Jesus, when I think of you having to deal with Patlack, and that skinny kid on Friday, and all those child support clients turning their backs on their progeny." He squeezed her hand.

G.o.d bless him for sparing Hannah an explanation of the poor fit between her and family law. Oh, she'd manage well enough in a domestic relations courtroom if she had to.

But Trent's reaction told her she didn't have to. The relief of his acceptance was dizzying, even though it might also be temporary. He stayed beside her while Hannah's breathing calmed and her system tried to find its equilibrium.

"I'll help you locate your birth parents, if that's what you want," Trent said. "The private investigators we use are very good, Hannah. They find needles in haystacks for me all the time, and all it takes is a phone call to turn them loose."

Hannah had never once, not in her wildest imaginations, thought he might help her put her family back together. Never thought anybody could help.

"What if my mom died in detox last week? What if she had no idea who my dad was? What if he r-raped her?"

She'd said too much. Beside her, Trent's demeanor underwent a subtle change.

"If he did, we'll deal with it. But how on earth did you ever have the courage to have a child of your own, Hannah? Where did you find the strength?"

The question was logical under the circ.u.mstances, but Hannah hadn't seen it coming and couldn't quite muster the fort.i.tude to answer it entirely.

"Grace was a gift. I never expected to be anybody's mother, but when the opportunity arose, I was determined my daughter would at least know her mother loved her and wanted her and didn't abandon her."

Trent raised their joined hands and kissed Hannah's knuckles.

"I will see about moving up the hire date for your replacement. You will not be forced to deal with domestic relations any longer than necessary."

Hannah was about to tell him not to be so hasty, that she could manage the next few months provided he was guarding her back, but a knock on the door stopped her.

Trent went to the door, opening it far enough that Hannah could see James on the other side, his expression serious.

They spoke quietly, then Trent opened the door farther.

"There's a social worker on line one for you, Hannah," Trent said. "Debbie recognized the exchange. The call is coming from one of the local elementary schools."

Hannah reached for the numbness any foster kid learned to conjure eventually, an indifference beyond panic. A social worker would contact Hannah in the middle of the day for one reason and only one.