He stepped toward her, his hands curving around to support the back of her head. “As far as I know, making out in hallways isn’t against museum policy.”
“How familiar are you with this museum’s policies?”
“As familiar as I want to be.”
“How familiar are you with what’s in good taste?”
“Leah?”
“Yes?”
“I’ve never cared about what’s in good taste.”
She saw so much desire in his eyes that her breath turned shallow.
Heat rose, awareness built. One of his fingertips caressed the tender skin at the back of her neck. She could feel the hammer of her heart, hear the hitch in his inhalations.
“You wouldn’t want to ‘let a gorgeous guy like me out of your sight,’ would you?” he asked.
Shecould notresist a man who quoted Han Solo to her. But in the name of spunkiness, she leaned toward his ear and reciprocated with another quote. “‘Don’t get cocky.’”
“Kiss me.”
“I don’t remember a quote about kissing—”
“That last one,” he whispered, “wasn’t a quote.”
Oh, for heaven’s sake, who cared about what was or wasn’t in good taste? She pulled him to her and they kissed deep and slow.
A sound of approval rumbled in his throat.
Someone might come in.
But the danger of discovery only heightened the thrill.
His fingers speared into her hair.
Sebastian.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Late the next morning, Leah woke in her hotel room to a column of sunshine falling across the foot of her bed. Clean, crisp sheets cocooned her.
A text from Sebastian, who’d be back at work by now on this Monday morning, awaited her.
Meet me for coffee before you drive home? I know a place.
Is this my life?she thought, tossing a hand onto the pillow above her head with a happy sigh.
The enormous gray monolith otherwise known as the Lewis R. Slaton Courthouse had been constructed more than a hundred years ago. Leah sat in the waiting area of the “closed file room,” smelling the building’s age in its dust-scented air and seeing the building’s age in the old-fashioned glass partition separating her from the room’s attendant.
This morning she’d placed a phone call to the courthouse and learned that criminal records were not available online, but that both criminal and civil records were available here. So she’d checked out of her hotel and relocated to the courthouse computer lab. She’d begun by searching for criminal and civil proceedingsthat named her parents, Erica and Todd Montgomery. Her efforts generated no matches. Nor did her efforts generate a match for Trina Brookside.
When she’d moved on to Jonathan Brookside, however, she’d hit pay dirt. So much pay dirt that she’d been momentarily caught by surprise, like a hide-and-seek-player who jumps when they discover their friend blinking at them from underneath a bed.
Seven civil suits had been filed against Jonathan over the years. But only two—one for wrongful termination and one for breach of contract—had been filed recently enough that the associated documents were available digitally.
She’d combed through those two suits and recorded all the pertinent details on her phone. Then she’d jotted down the case numbers for the other five cases.
