She breathed deeply staring up at him. It was to stop the tears from filling her eyes. She started to feel the emotional burden of meeting her family again. Thankfully, he spoke distracting her.
“Okay, now we talk. Come with me.” He carried his bag in one hand and took hers in the other and led her through a long wide hallway. She could really get used to his hand on hers. If, after five years, only meeting her family made him do this, she’d endure her mother’s disdain over and over again. Oh, she hoped that he wasn’t angry with her. He was so unreadable.
They walked down a long hallway to a set of double doors. He opened one to reveal a large bedroom. She looked up at him questioningly. “My room. We won’t be disturbed here.” He closed the door behind them.
“Lance I—“
“One moment.” He lifted his luggage and disappeared down a hall for a moment. When he came back his hands were empty.
She was too anxious to know why he put herself out for her, but wasn’t quite sure how to approach it. “W—why did you—I mean—”
“Sit down.” He indicated with a sweep of his hand to the bed.
It surprised her that she listened so quickly because he was being a little demanding and Tammy never took orders from anyone except the doctors—at work. Maybe it had something to do with that inscrutable honeyed stare and the sound of his soft husky voice. She sat on the edge of the bed.
“He was an ass. She was horrible,” he finally said.
She looked up at him as he stood there, handsome and foreboding, giving nothing away in his expression, as usual. Could he possibly look any more striking? Yet he was right about her family. “He’s always an ass. And she was always horrible,” she agreed without hesitation. Was that the semblance of a smile? She felt her own mouth pull a bit.
“A spoiled pompous ass. It pissed me off.”
She laughed that time, her eyes twinkling and to her shock he actually smiled down at her. In all the years she’d known him, she’d never seen him angry, not even when Richard and her mother were staring down their noses at him. His self-control was impressive. She would have never guessed that it angered him. If anything, she thought he was annoyed with her for not telling him anything about her life. Then she remembered what he’d told her back home. It doesn’t matter Tam. No one’s judging you here. We all know who you are, here, now.
He pulled one of the Queen Anne styled chairs away from the wall so when he sat down facing her, their knees nearly touched. He rested his elbows on the armrests and interlocked his fingers. Then his eyes met hers and she ceased laughing, but kept a smile. He was really a pleasure to look at, even in all of his seriousness. “We need to get our story straight. Your mother is obviously going to make this experience a living hell for you, and your father is too intelligent not to catch on that this is a sham. Then there’s the pompous ass, still looking at you with lust in his eyes.”
He was spot on about all of it. She didn’t know how he deduced this after just meeting them for a brief moment, but she was certain he didn’t get his degree out of a Cracker Jack box. Lance went to Harvard and graduated with honors. She nodded in agreement and he began talking. She couldn’t help but hang on every word.
“My favorite color is red. I like expensive wine, but would take a good cold bottle of beer on a hot day after working in the fields over that anytime.” He stopped and waved a hand at her. She realized it was her turn. He was telling her a little at a time probably so she could remember it better.
“Okay then. I like blue, or green but deep hues, not pastels. I like white wine more than red, and I’ll agree with the beer on a hot day.” She had a vision of him on the range back home as he tilted back that handsome head full of perspiration and dust, to swallow a nice cold beer after working under the hot sun with the cattle. She felt her tongue trace the edge of her bottom lip and quickly stilled it with her teeth. Her eyes met his again and she saw that his eyes briefly flicked there. If he saw that gesture he didn’t say anything and she was very grateful. It would have embarrassed the hell out of her.
“I practiced law for ten years in New York. Then I moved to Billings and opened my own law firm with two partners. It was very successful. It made me filthy rich. Then I sold my share to them a few years later. It was even more—lucrative.” He paused studying her expression before he continued. There was a glint in his eyes over that last word. “I made some great investments from there. I guess you could say I’m semi-retired. I find I’m happier at home with my family. I hold an office in town that I work out of mostly pro bono, part-time, and every now and then I come here or Billings to consult just to keep my feet wet.”
Again, no expression, just a brief nod to indicate it was her turn. Instead she asked questions. That piece of information opened up a world of interest, and she couldn’t help herself. “New York? What kind of law? Which firm?”
“Mostly capital murder cases. And I was the Assistant to the District Attorney.”
She tilted her head in surprise. “Wow, an ADA I would have never guessed.” A public servant, like her? His modesty was endless. She was sure that he could have gotten a better paying job at a private practice. She’d heard he was a great lawyer, not good, but great. Yet, he volunteers his time to help others? His next words answered her curiosity about his career path.
“When I graduated from Harvard, I had offers at a dozen exclusive law firms, I interned at the two most prestigious in Boston, but I wasn’t in it for the money. My family had money. I also didn’t like seeing the guilty get away with nothing because they had money to pay for great representation. Instead, I wanted to make a name for myself in putting away people like that. The district attorney went out on a limb for me. Usually they like us to clerk for some time, but he saw my potential. I won my first murder trial, and it was tough.”
“Didyou make a name for yourself?”
He nodded but didn’t elaborate. There was something in his eyes that suddenly clouded over.
Gosh, she really wanted to know why he quit, but if Lance wanted to share he would have. She stored that question in the back of her mind. Maybe one day he’d let her know. Well, now it makes sense on how her father recognized the name.
“Your turn, Tam. Why nursing?”
She looked down at her hands folded on her lap for a moment before she answered him.Tam, it was just the way he said it. Tingles ran through her. Then there were those heavenly light brown eyes he possessed. She could easily lose herself in them. Finally, she gathered her wits and her eyes met his again. “At first, I think it was to make my mother mad. I mean, I was young, at eighteen and itching to rebel just to get out from under her rules.”
He pulled his nicely shaped mouth into a smile and sat back in the chair rubbing a forefinger across his stubbly chin. His eyes studied her with interest and in silence, and Tammy wondered what the hell he was thinking. It was as if she’d answered a long awaited question he had. “I amuse you?”
He shook his head subtly. “I was just thinking that it suited you—the rebelliousness.”
She chuckled. “More like passive-aggressive but thank you for not saying that. Anyway, she wanted me to marry the pompous ass. She was grooming me for it since I was fourteen.”
“That’s not much of a life, is it?” he said softly.
