The light turns green, forcing him to pay attention to the road, and gives me a moment to catch my breath.
“So November 24,” he says. “I wasn’t expecting a court date that soon.”
Okay. This I can do. Focus on the case, rather than on how Mick makes me feel.
“I wasn’t either. But we’re fortunate to have Rose Whittamore as our judge. She’s sharp and will weigh all the evidence fairly. That she set a court date only five weeks out says that she has Dwayde’s best interests in mind. Most of my cases take months, sometimes more than a year, to be heard.”
He whistles softly. “That’s gotta be rough on a kid.”
“It is.” I think of Gracie Maxwell and some of my other young clients sitting in limbo. “The courts are overloaded. And children, especially those who are underprivileged or in foster care, are still seen as less than. It’s a challenge some days just to get their voices heard.”
“But you’re making a difference. I admire that.” His praise sounds sincere. And I find myself once again basking in his approval, liking it a little too much.
“What about you and Papa’s Kids?” I ask. “From what I read, you’re making a difference, too.”
“You were reading about me?” he says, taking his eyes off the road and flashing those smoldering dark orbs.
“Yes, for business purposes.”
“Uh-huh,” he taunts and squeezes my knee, spreading a liquid fire up my legs. “You’re sure your interest wasn’t of a more personal nature?”
Rankled by my body’s reaction to his touch, I retort, “I had to ensure you were a reliable witness.”
“Am I?” Mick asks as we leave the city behind. Awaiting my answer, he turns onto an empty country road and with his big hand on the stick, opens throttle. The power of the car suits the man.
“Yes,” I finally say begrudgingly over the din of the engine.
He laughs. “It almost sounds as if you didn’t want me to be.”
For Dwayde’s sake, I wanted him to be the perfect witness. For my own selfish reasons, I wish I had found some dirt to make him unlikable. And that’s my problem. As much as Mick hurt me, I’m still not only achingly attracted to him, I actually like him. For all the same reasons I fell in love with him in the first place. That’s what scares me. He’s funny, caring, and protective. And he’s so damn hot, he makes me burn with the urge to jump in the back seat like old times and let him put those large, talented hands to good use.
“I suppose you read about O’Malley,” he says, breaking into my thoughts. The teasing in his voice is gone.
“I did. But it’s not an issue,” I hurry to assure him. “You were defending the boys, and you weren’t charged.”
“I lost my cool. I could have handled it without hitting him…I should have.”
“You’re protective of the people you love. You’re not your—”
“Father.” He finishes for me. “You’d be surprised by how similar we are.”
I’m taken aback by his comment and the darkness behind the words. “What do you mean?” I ask, cautiously glancing over. His eyes, staring ahead, have hardened and his jaw is clenched. Whatever Mick may believe about the apple not falling far from the tree is wrong. He’s nothing like his father.
I watch him rein in his emotions as he releases the gearshift to run a hand through his cropped waves. “Another time. I don’t want to spend my date with you talking about him.”
“It’s not a date,” I point out. “It’s a business dinner.”
“Tomato, tomahto…” He wiggles his eyebrows at me, all traces of brooding gone.
I suppress a smile; relieved the dark moment is over, even if my curiosity is still piqued. “So tell me about Papa’s Kids,” I say. “It’s an ambitious endeavor.”
“Don’t give me too much credit. I hadn’t thought much about homeless youth until Dwayde came into our lives. Then when Cayo died, I couldn’t think of a better way to honor his memory. Putting up the money is the easy part, though. It’s my director and counselors that do all the real work.”
“It couldn’t happen without the money or without someone running the operations. It’s like the cogs in a wheel: when they all work together, every part is important. What you’re doing counts.”
“On a small scale,” he says. “We’ve got only thirty beds, all of which are full. I’m in the process of buying another place, but when there are nearly twenty thousand homeless kids in Chicago—and that’s just according to Child Protective Services—another house isn’t going to put much of a dent in that number.”
Mick isn’t satisfied with not being able to do more. He still bears the guilt for not protecting his mother from his abusive father when he was only a child, for not saving Papa T from terminal cancer, for the headlines that brought Dwayde’s whereabouts to the attention of the Franklins. And then there’s me. If he knew the real reason I left and what followed, I can’t imagine what that would do to him.
