Courtney’s cheek peeled away from Matt’s warm, sexy chest as she raised her head to identify the noise that had awakened her. The kittens raced up and down the hallway from the bedroom to the living room and back, their tiny paws thumping over the wide-plank pine flooring.
Out beyond the French doors, the June sky had turned the deep lavender of morning twilight. She braced herself on an elbow and stared down at Matt in the half-light. His hair curled down along his forehead, and his thick, dark lashes lay against his cheeks. He looked peaceful, content, unworried. And so very young…
She resisted the urge to touch his hair or kiss his sleepy mouth. No matter how much she lusted after his body—and she needed it like an addict craves his next fix—kissing him awake would be a huge mistake.
He was a terrific lover. That shouldn’t have surprised her since he’d had so much practice in his young life. But practice didn’t always make perfect. She’d had lots of practice and had never experienced anything like last night. He’d been so generous in bed, so interested in giving pleasure as well as receiving it, that it would be so easy to believe he cared about her. But she was too smart to fall into the trap of mistaking pleasure and passion for true love.
She could no more imagine Matt Lyndon in a stable, long-term relationship than she could imagine finding a unicorn in Eagle Hill Manor’s backyard. It wasn’t going to happen. Ever.
It was time to leave.
She slipped from the bed and tiptoed into the living room, where she found her clothes scattered across the discarded cardboard. She slipped on her dress without bothering with her underwear or shoes. She found her purse where she’d dropped it the night before and dug for her keys. Just as she was ready to open the door, one of the kittens scampered up to her and curled itself around her ankle. She had no idea if this was Aramis or Porthos because the two kittens were so alike. But the kitten meowed and looked up at her with such an adorable face.
How could anyone call these little fluffballs Doom and Ghul? Short answer: a twentysomething guy just moving into his first apartment. It was like a sign or something, reminding her that Matt Lyndon was basically a well-educated frat boy.
She stared down at the kitten, torn by her conflicted emotions. Should she take him home? She wanted a cat. But a small part of her brain whispered that leaving the cat at Matt’s gave her an excuse to knock on his door some other time. Plus, leaving the cat here meant that he’d have to scoop the litter box.
She picked up the kitten and snuggled it against her cheek. He rubbed his head against her and started to purr. A lump formed in her throat for no reason she could truly explain.
“It would be dumb to leave you here where you’d be called something horrible like Ra’s al Ghul,” she whispered to the adorable creature snuggled against her neck.
It was settled. Better to go, leaving nothing behind. She’d satisfied her curiosity once, and if she allowed herself to satisfy it again, she might end up hurt or broken. Curiosity killed the cat, and in this instance, it might destroy the cat owner’s heart.
Besides, she’d had a wonderful night. That was all she needed. A wise woman would leave it at that.
She didn’t feel very wise as she crossed the short distance between his apartment and hers. She opened the door and headed into her own bedroom with the kitten, where she fell into her bed, snuggling the furball until she fell asleep. Thank God Monday was one of her off days.
She woke up hours later, the kitten still curled next to her. “You’ve definitely had a personality transplant,” she said to the kitten, giving him a little kiss on his tiny head. She reached for her cell phone and checked the time. Holy crap, it was almost noon, and she had promised Sid she’d be there in the morning.
Guilt and remorse washed through her, along with a familiar sense of shame. What had she been thinking? The last thing she wanted was another one-night stand, and even though it had been a memorable one, sex with Matt Lyndon was not what she wanted.
She wanted a relationship. She wanted to find someone who would rock her world the way Jeff rocked Melissa’s, and Dusty rocked Amy’s, and David rocked Willow’s. She wanted the fairy tale. Instead she got twenty-first-century sexual liberation, which wasn’t all that.
She raced through her shower and headed out to Sid’s place, stopping at the Food Lion to do a little grocery shopping for him, focusing on food that was low salt, low-fat, and low-calorie.
But when she knocked on Sid’s door, Leslie Heath answered it, wearing a purple and green dashiki shirt and looking like a Baby Boomer fashion plate. “Oh, hi, Courtney, we were just about to call you. Let me take those groceries.” She snagged the plastic bags from Courtney’s hands and continued talking. “I’ll put them away. You come on in and visit. We’ve been commiserating and plotting.”
“Commiserating and plotting?”
Leslie waltzed off without any further elaboration. She moved into the kitchen as if she lived there. She seemed surprisingly familiar with where Sid kept pantry items. Courtney watched for a moment, emotions churning. Who was this woman? Leslie was as unlike Barbara as a woman could be. Barbara had been reserved and conservative. Leslie was anything but.
Courtney held her resentment in check and turned toward Sid’s small living room, crowded with Barbara’s big, traditional furniture, which he’d been unable to let go of when he’d sold his house in town. Courtney found Sid sitting in the big wing chair, wearing yet another Hawaiian shirt—this one in the same shades of green and purple as Leslie’s dashiki. Despite the loud shirt, or maybe because of it, he looked surprisingly well, considering that he’d had coronary bypass surgery less than a week ago. His color had improved dramatically, and the twinkle had returned to his deep-set blue eyes.
And why not? Three other sixtysomething women occupied Barbara’s gigantic, rolled-arm sofa. Sid and his coterie of women appeared to be having a party of some kind. Plastic cups in various shades of pink sat on the mahogany end tables, and a platter of half-eaten crudités took up most of the space on the claw-footed coffee table.
The moment Courtney stepped into the living room, one of the women hopped up from the sofa and spread her arms. “Courtney, sweetie, we’re so glad you came.” Linda Petersen, Willow and Juni’s mother, enveloped Courtney in a fierce hug. Linda had apparently gotten the hippy-dippy apparel memo, because she was wearing a loose-fitting, blue-and-white India-print dress, and she smelled like the lavender she grew out on her farm, where she made the soap and other natural lotions featured at Eagle Hill Manor.
“I didn’t know you and Sid were friends,” Courtney said as Linda released her.
“Oh, I just met Sid today. I’m one of Leslie’s friends. She put out an all-points bulletin late last night, so we assembled the gang.” She gestured toward the other ladies in the room. “These are my friends Alice and Susan. Y’all, meet Courtney. She’s the wedding planner at my daughter’s bed-and-breakfast place. Leslie, Alice, and Susan are my best organizers, and if we’re going to fight this eviction, we’ll need everyone.”
Leslie and Alice looked like a couple of suburban grannies, not organizers. Courtney waved in greeting, and they waved back. “What evictions?” she asked.
“The ones I predicted,” Sid said.
Leslie cleared her throat from behind. “Yes, you did warn us all. But I had hoped that maybe Scott Anderson would finally get his act together.”
“But he didn’t,” Sid said. “He sold out, and that bastard who bought the apartments from him had all the notices hand delivered on Saturday. Dogwood Estates is going to be torn down.”
“It’s a dark day, I’ll agree to that,” Leslie said on a sigh. “But as the chair of the Dogwood Estates Tenants Association, it’s my duty to fight this thing. So I figured we could have a meeting in Sid’s living room, and that way we can plot and scheme and make sure he takes his medicine at the same time.”
Courtney was a little alarmed. She wasn’t sure Sid needed all this excitement. Besides, Linda had a reputation for fighting lost causes. Sid didn’t need to get his hopes up, although clearly he didn’t sound very hopeful, which might be a good thing at the end of the day. Sometimes being a realist was called for. And wasn’t that why she’d left Matt’s bed this morning?
She turned toward Sid. “I’m not sure protesting is going to change things. And I told you before, Sid, if you need a place to stay, you can have my spare room. I’ll take care of you.”
Sid’s lips thinned, and the twinkle dimmed in his eye. “Girl, I truly appreciate the offer, and I know you’d do a good job looking after me, what with you being a nurse and all. But I’m not an old man, and I don’t need a nurse.” His gaze shifted toward Leslie, and his expression softened ever so slightly.
Courtney knew when to stop arguing. She nodded and said, “Okay.” But a painful wave of loneliness washed through her. Sid was moving on with his life. And she was being left in the dust.
“Sweetie pie,” Linda said, pulling Courtney out of her self-pity, “we can’t let Leslie get pushed around.”
“Okay,” Courtney said, “but I don’t know if protesting is going to change anything. Maybe you should have another conversation with your lawyers or something.”
Sid waved his hand in dismissal. “Those lawyers from LL&K are as useless as tits on a bull. You’re right, a protest won’t change one damn thing, but it might make some people in government sweat a little. It might stir things up. Not that I expect anyone working for LL&K to be happy about that.”
“What are you trying to say, Sid?” Linda asked.
He let go of a long breath. “Linda, I know your girl’s married to David Lyndon. But I don’t trust any of them.”
Linda helped herself to several pieces of broccoli. “You’re entitled to your own point of view, but I can say, in all honesty, that my son-in-law has been a huge surprise to me. He’s a good man. I’m sure he cares about what’s happening here. It couldn’t hurt to get his advice.”
“Go ahead. Waste your time. But none of them Lyndons has impressed me yet. That last one, Matthew? He was the biggest jerk of them all.”
Matt jolted awake at the sound of his cell phone alarm. He raised his head, still unfamiliar with his new bedroom, and squinted at the bright morning sun streaming through the French doors. He hauled in a deep breath, filled with Courtney’s incredible scent—something wild and musky and deliciously sweet. His groin tightened as he propped himself on one elbow.
There was no sign of her. No sounds coming from the bathroom or down the hall in the kitchen. And Ghul lay curled on the pillow where Courtney had slept beside him for part of the night. He ran his hands over the rumpled sheets. They were cool.
So she’d left without a word. And judging by the single cat on the pillow, she’d absconded with Doom, who was not exactly her cat, but he could see why Doom might prefer living with Courtney. Did she know she’d taken the wrong cat? Maybe not. And maybe Doom would be happier with her. She’d probably change his name to Fluffy, or something stupid like that.
Damn, he missed Courtney. It might have been nice to wake up beside her. He had no doubt that morning sex with Courtney would be as awesome as evening sex had been. In fact, in his expert opinion, sex with Courtney was utterly mind and body blowing. And for some strange reason, her absence made him feel hollow inside, which was odd because usually he appreciated it when a woman departed before the sun came up.
He hauled his ass out of bed and stood in the shower for longer than was absolutely necessary, letting the warm water sluice over his body while he told himself not to be such a wuss over a woman. There were plenty of fish in the sea, and the one next door wasn’t interested in a purely physical relationship with him.
Courtney Wallace had a romantic streak a mile wide. She was a wedding planner, and hadn’t she told him last fall, in a moment of weakness, that she’d been waiting for Mr. Right all her life?
Of course she had.
She had also come knocking at his door last night looking for something else, but she’d left and taken a cat with her. It was time to move on. He loved women, and he would love to have sex with Courtney again, but he was honest about himself. He was no good for Courtney. It would be better not to repeat what had happened last night.
So he shaved and dressed in one of his gray suits and put on his conservative blue-and-white striped tie and headed off to the office. It was another humid June day, and even though the walk was short, he was sweating by the time he entered his cubbyhole and found a new stack of folders sitting on his chair.
These papers had nothing to do with any of the pro bono cases he’d been working on as LL&K’s contribution to the Blue Ridge Legal Aid Society. They appeared to be background information pertaining to several of David’s clients who were scheduled to meet with him later in the day. The cases involved one custody dispute, two divorces, and a client who needed a living trust. Sticky notes had been attached to each file, in David’s handwriting, noting the time of each meeting.
When he opened his e-mail, he found a message from David indicating that henceforward he would be relying on Matt to track progress on client work and to manage his client meeting schedule.
On some level, Matt knew this was typical first-year associate work, but he felt as if he’d been demoted, which was odd because these cases involved real, billable hours, in marked contrast to the work he’d done for the Legal Aid Society in general and the Dogwood Estates Tenants Association in particular. He ought to view this as a vote of confidence, that his partners trusted him to do something with real, paying clients. But he just couldn’t see it that way.
Matt couldn’t help but wonder if Dad had pulled him off the pro bono work because he’d gotten too deeply involved with the clients—a mistake Arwen had warned him about. And yet, as he parsed through the conversation on Sunday, Dad had seemed most upset by Arwen’s memo and Matt’s wild idea of suing the government.
An idea that August Kopp had not ridiculed.
Matt was trying to figure out if Mr. Kopp had been trying to encourage him when Arwen herself strolled into his office looking as if she hadn’t slept in days. “Are you okay?” he asked.
“I’m fine. Why?” Her response seemed tense, just like her shoulders.
“Nothing.” Matt knew better than to tell a woman that she looked as if she’d rolled right out of bed. Arwen usually showed up every morning bright-eyed and buttoned-down. Today her hair looked slept on, and her eyes looked bloodshot. Maybe she’d tied one on at the Jaybird last night.
She dropped into his side chair and leaned forward. “Have you heard the news?”
“What news?” He braced for something bad.
“GB Ventures has sent eviction notices to everyone living at Dogwood Estates. Leslie left a message on my cell Sunday afternoon. She’s pretty upset.”
“I’m sure she is. But we saw this coming, and I was told pretty explicitly that we needed to cut our losses on this,” Matt said on a long sigh as he leaned back in his squeaky chair.
Arwen gave him the Frown of Disapproval. “I thought you cared about those people.”
“I do. But the senior partner of this law firm, also known as my father, has made it clear that we’re all better off without Dogwood Estates because it’s an eyesore.”
A big hollow place opened in his chest. He wanted his father’s respect, but he didn’t respect his father. Not on this issue. Dad had shown no compassion for the people who were losing their homes.
Arwen’s frown disappeared, replaced by another look he couldn’t quite decipher. She leaned back in the chair and folded her arms. “I know it’s not wise for me to say this, but in my opinion, you should ignore your dad.”
“Is that why you showed your memo to David?”
She nodded. “I was worried that you might sit on it…because of your Dad.”
“You know, if Dad knew how you felt, he’d probably fire you.”
She nodded. “Probably. But here’s the thing. Something unethical is going on. I can feel it in my bones.”
“I can too. But what can we do? We aren’t crusaders. And the unethical appearance of insider trading has nothing to do with Dogwood Estates. So we don’t actually have a client. And, you know, Dad is right about that. If we want to pursue this, we need to actually represent someone.”
“Maybe that’s what we should do.”
“What, go looking for a client so we can expose corruption in the county government? Somehow I don’t think Dad would be happy with me for doing something like that.”
Arwen’s frown returned. “Okay.”
She got up, and the hole in Matt’s chest grew so large it felt as if it might swallow him whole. “Wait,” he said.
Arwen stopped and turned. “You’ve changed your mind?”
He gestured toward the files on his desk. “Look, my chain has been yanked. David has me working on a bunch of divorces. And based on the e-mail he sent me this morning, I’ve been promoted. I’m now in charge of his schedule, which makes me a glorified appointment secretary. How on earth can I possibly find this mythological client?”
“By just doing it.”
“Okay. So how would we go about finding a client who’s been fined by the county?”
She smiled, and some color returned to her face. “I have a friend in the building department. I’ll see if I can get him to give us some information. And by the way, first-year associates always manage their partner’s schedules. And they also work more than eight hours a day.” She turned and stalked from the office.
Damn. Of course first-year associates put in long hours, and David seemed to be intent on keeping him busy if for no other reason than to keep him far away from the crap Arwen had discovered in her research.
But he couldn’t stay away and maintain any kind of self-respect. Something rotten was happening in Jefferson County. And deep in his soul, Matt wanted to be more than just a charming guy with a last name everyone recognized. If he truly wanted to compete with his brother and cousins, sitting back and following Dad’s rules was probably not the way to do it.