Page 3 of Cast Stones
“It must be.” He shoots me a grin, but there’s a sympathetic downturn at the corners. He knows I’m estranged from my family, and the only friends I have are him and his boyfriend. Oh, and that I’m a bona fide public defender work whore who never turns away a client, no matter how long I take to answer their call.
He rolls his eyes as my cell ringsagain, and then he’s padding back down the hallway to his bedroom, his parting words wrapped up with a bow of disapproval. “Anytime this century would be nice…”
“Sarcasm doesn’t suit you, Grady.”
“And black circles under my eyes do?”
Noted and underlined.
Grabbing my navy check blanket, I toss it around my shoulders as I head for the door. It’s eighty-six degrees in Ft. Lauderdale tonight, but I’m freezing.I’m always freezing.That’s another thing Grady teases me for, and another thing I can never fully explain.
The rest of me has moved on, but my soul is still stuck begging for mercy on that cold, stone tablet.
I find my cell phone where Grady said it was, lighting up the counter like a Christmas tree. My heart sinks when I see who’s calling.
Trent Anderson.
Public defending is a tough gig: the money is crap, and the clients tend to scrap and bite as much as the district attorney’s office does. It’s even tougher when your colleagues are a bag of sexist dicks who’d be much happier if I were laying on my back instead of walking all over theirs. Victory is hard to come by in this line of work, but my success rate is the highest in the county.
And the biggest sexist, jealous dick in the bag?
Trent Anderson.
“You took your time, Bailey,” comes a familiar drawl as soon as I hit the accept button. “I hope I didn’t disturb your beauty sleep.”
Prick.
“What do you want, Anderson?” I say crisply.
“Court services are up my ass. Judge Harris is insisting you take on some new case that’s connected to mine.”
“At three in the morning?”
“I don’t make the rules, Blue Balls.”
I prefer Sunshine as a nickname, but this is what happens when you turn down every man in an all-male department. The pack gets sore, and then they get vicious.
“Why me?”
“Because you look cute in stacked heels and Harris has a hard-on for you.”
Prick, times a hundred.
To men like Trent Anderson, my success will never be attributed to my work ethic, or to the simple fact that I turn myself inside out for every client—chasing a justice that I never had for myself.
“What’s the case?” I say briskly.
“I’ll leave you in suspense. Just get your ass down to the Broward County Jail by six a.m.”
“File?”
“Not released yet.”
“This is so unprofessional, Anderson!”
He laughs, delighting in my rare crack in composure. “That time of the month, Blue Balls?”
Screw you, asshole. What with your shitty law degree from your shitty Ivy League school to match your shitty attitude because daddy is insisting you “do good” before you earn millions getting the guilty off for your family’s private firm.
