“Would you excuse me?” I slid out from behind the table as the waiter popped the cork, leaving Sylvia and Randall to toast their victory without me. I hurried between the rows of tables, desperate to get to the ladies’ room and splash water on my face. How was this happening? How had I just accepted an offer to adapt a television series based on my own crime?
My feet wobbled in Sylvia’s gaping heels. I stumbled, nearly tripping over them, when a set of familiar hazel eyes found mine across the dining room.
Julian Baker did a double take. His bored, tuned-out expression grew suddenly intense and alert. The attractive older man seated across the table from him didn’t seem to notice. I pretended not to notice, too, as Julian rose from his seat.
I covered the side of my face as he navigated between the tables toward me. Julian and I had only dated for a few weeks last fall. Our relationship had been hot and liberating and refreshingly honest, but I had known early on it wasn’t going to work. He was nine years my junior and still in law school, and I was a single mom in theaftermath of a divorce. We were at very different places in our lives, and yet somehow the universe kept throwing us together.
He called my name before I made it to the ladies’ room. I turned, crossing my arms self-consciously over the sock balls in my bra.
“Julian! What a surprise,” I said, pretending I had not just sprinted through The Palm to avoid him. The smell of lavender bloomed from my sweaty cleavage and I discreetly stuffed the errant sock ball back inside its cup. “What are you doing here?” I asked, trying and failing to ignore his befuddled glance at my chest before he forced his eyes back to mine. He had seen under my brassieres enough to know exactly what I was (and was not) packing inside them.
“Business lunch,” he said, hitching a thumb toward the table he’d just escaped from.
“Going well?”
“Yeah, great. You?”
“Very.” We were both terrible liars.
He glanced over his shoulder at the colleague he’d been meeting with. The man bore a striking resemblance to Julian, with the same athletic build and sun-kissed skin, but the man’s honey-blond curls were streaked with silver.
“Come on,” Julian said, hooking an index finger around my pinkie. He led me to the emergency exit at the back of the restaurant. We emerged in an alley behind the building. A weight seemed to fall from his shoulders as he leaned back against the brick.
His tie fell askew, the late February wind tossing a curl over his eyes. They closed with relief as he took the first full breath either of us had probably drawn since we’d entered the place.
“That bad, huh?” I asked, slumping against the wall beside him.
His laugh was as dry as his sidelong look. “My father,” he explained. “Courtland Baker. Senior partner at Baker & Stratton.” The title sounded sour on his tongue. “He thinks I’m wasting my talent. Why should I sling drinks at a bar after slaving away at the county courthouse all day as a public defender when I could be following in his footsteps, doing lunch with investment bankers and highbrow clients at The Palm? He thinks it’s beneath me.” Julian sighed and shook his head. “Forget it. I haven’t seen you in weeks and here I am, wasting a perfectly good five minutes in an alley with you to bitch about my dad.” He rolled sideways on one shoulder, smiling as he tugged the edge of the sock ball peeking out of my blouse. “I’d say you look great, but honestly, you look like your meeting is going about as well as mine. Everything okay?”
I cringed. “I think I just accepted an offer for a TV show.”
Julian’s eyebrows disappeared under his curls. “Seriously? That’s amazing. So why don’t you look happy about it?”
I considered kicking off my shoes, sitting down on the pavement, and venting to him about everything. He was the only person aside from Vero who knew the truth about what had happened between Harris Mickler and me. Or how closely aligned that story was to the book I’d written. I knew he would listen—and probably give me great advice—but it didn’t feel right to use him as a sounding board for things I hadn’t confided to Nick. “It’s… complicated.”
Julian nodded as if that somehow made sense. “How are things with Detective Anthony?”
“Good. I think. I don’t know,” I confessed, resting my head against the wall. “That’s also complicated.”
He nodded as if he understood that, too.
“How about you? Are you seeing anyone?” His roommate, Parker, was a brilliant young prosecutor. She was gorgeous and crazyabout him, and I had assumed it would only be a matter of time before they got back together.
His shrug was noncommittal. “No one I’d accept a ride in a minivan with.”
I laughed, careful not to hold his gaze too long. I didn’t have any regrets about ending things with Julian, but I would probably always hold a soft spot for him. By the look on his face, he’d hold one for me, too.
“I was going to call you last night,” he said. “I got worried when I saw the story on the news, but I didn’t want to overstep. I read up on the Dupree investigation, just to make sure…” He paused.
“That I wasn’t the new person of interest in the case?” I asked. A guilty flush rushed to his cheeks, and I shook my head. “This murder, at least, has nothing to do with me.”
“What about your ex-husband?”
I stuck a finger in Sylvia’s shoe and rubbed the blister on my heel. “I don’t think so. I suspect someone else, but I don’t have any evidence to prove it.”
“Then I guess I can’t be mad about you dating a police officer,” Julian teased. “That doesn’t mean I have to like it, but at least I know you’ll be safe if there’s a killer running loose in your neighborhood. Maybe Nick can help get your ex off the hook, assuming that’s what you want.” It came out like a question, and honestly, I wasn’t sure I knew the answer. To some degree, Steven had made his own bed, and a broken, bitter piece of me wanted to watch him sleep in it. The same piece of me that wanted to believe that Penny and Mrs. Haggerty were right—that I would be better off if he wasn’t in the picture. I wanted my kids all the time, not just some of it. I wanted the security that came with not having to pay my ex-husband rent, and a life that didn’t necessitate coparenting strategies and custody agreements.But my gut—the piece of me that had been niggling at me since I’d left Penny’s house—was screaming at me that Steven didn’t do this. And I didn’t want my kids’ relationship with their father to be reduced to visiting days once a month within the walls of a state prison.
“I don’t think there’s much Nick can do for him. Steven insisted on using one of his buddies to represent him—a divorce lawyer. The guy’s good, but I’m worried.”
