“You can only do your best. You can’t guarantee a conviction.”
“I know that,” she said and sank onto a stool. Her voice went quieter. “I know that. I also know that if we’d been able to get the Cat on a burglary charge, he wouldn’t have been free to hurt Megan like he did.”
Jared didn’t like what he was hearing. “You don’t actually blame yourself, do you?”
“Not personally. As you’ve told me any number of times, I’m only one member of the law enforcement community. We all failed Megan, but I’m the one who has a chance to right that wrong.”
“You’re making it your own personal cause.”
“No. I’m prosecuting a case that has to be prosecuted.”
“But you’re taking it all on your own shoulders. Don’t do that, babe. The law takes strange twists. Stavanovich could be acquitted on some technicality that has nothing to do with you or the way you try your case. Don’t set yourself up for a fall.”
Savannah looked at him with bewilderment. “You sound like my sister. She says I do that all the time, but she’s wrong. If I approach this case with a mind to win, I’ll win.”
Jared wished he could believe that, but he was a realist. He’d had his share of exposure to criminal law and knew the twists a case could take. He’d seen Elise give everything she had to a case and then, through no fault of her own, lose. It hadn’t happened often, but it had happened, and he remembered the anguish. He didn’t want Savannah to have to suffer that. She was much more vulnerable. Then again, maybe it was just that he cared much more for her than he had for Elise.
He took her face in his hands. “I love you,” he whispered against her lips. “I missed you last weekend.”
Savannah closed her eyes and breathed in his scent. “I missed you, too.”
“One phone call wasn’t enough.”
“I know. But I had trouble getting off by myself to make even that one call. The others were always around.”
He kissed her cheek, then her chin. “You’ve got pretty color on your face.” His mouth slid down her neck. “How far does it go?”
“How far does what go?” she whispered, burying her fingers in the heather of his hair.
“Your tan.” He was unbuttoning her blouse, nuzzling his way to her breasts. “Mmm. Toasty here. You went topless?”
Savannah felt weak. He could do that to her so easily. She held more tightly to his hair. “It was a private beach.”
“Mmmm. Not bad.” He had unhooked her bra and kissed first one breast, then the other. “Did you go bottomless, too?” he asked against her swelling flesh.
“No.”
He went still. “I don’t believe you.”
“I swear it.”
He looked up and, in a raspy voice, said, “Show me.”
“I can’t.”
He stood. “Why not?”
“I’m drinking tea.”
“What’s drinking tea got to do with it?” he asked. Slipping his arms around her, he raised her just enough so that he could bunch her skirt up with his fingers. When he returned her to the stool, her slim skirt was around her waist and he was sliding a small triangle of silk over her legs.
She cried his name in a whisper, but he was kneeling again, looking at what he’d laid bare. “You’re right,” he said in a low, lazy drawl. “You wore a bottom. Not a very big one, though.” He touched the pale line that circled her hips.
“It was a bikini,” she managed to say, though how she didn’t know. Her insides were humming. Her mouth was dry, she was sure because every bit of moisture in her body had rushed to that special spot between her legs.
He slid his thumbs back and forth over the skin that had been hidden from the sun, then lower, through the nest of tight, chestnut curls at the apex of her thighs. Savannah gasped softly, but she didn’t protest when he drew her forward on the stool, then put his mouth where his thumbs had been.
His kiss was deep and wet, and while his tongue loved her, his hands stroked her thighs, holding them ever wider until her moment of release came. She was still in the throes of orgasm when he opened his jeans and entered her, and when he climaxed soon after, she was right with him.
