swung calm but killing eyes toward the prosecutor, who sat. Jake prompted Buck with raised brows. All the while, Maria either sensed or imagined the judge’s focus on her. And she could barely breathe.
“Dr. Keaton?” Distaste dripped from Buck’s tone.
Maria refused to act the defensive, sex-crazed, older woman part he’d dreamed up. “Griff offered me the notebook.” Now that the accusation was out in the open, she kept her voice calm and rational. The law required her to report a crime, but she didn’t have to throw away her client or her own reputation. “I never read it.”
Buck laughed as if she’d told a joke that wasn’t in the least funny. “You’ve seen these pages how many times?”
“Asked and answered,” Gil said. “Ad nause—”
“Gentlemen,” Jake said, as if nothing about this situation troubled him in the least, “I’ve warned you.”
Buck’s complacent expression faltered. “You can’t deny Griff wanted you to see what he’d written.”
She’d come to this courtroom with one goal in mind, to make the jury see the kid needed help, not a prison sentence. Instead, she was defending herself against Collier’s plan to make her seem like a pervert on the prowl in her own practice.
“You opened Griff up to his feelings, didn’t you, Dr. Keaton?”
Revolting filth of a man.
The courtroom spectators whispered. Jake’s chair squeaked, like nails raking a chalkboard, and she felt him looking at her. She refused to meet his gaze. She’d put distance between herself and Jake after she’d begun to treat his daughter, Leila. The last thing Leila Sloane or any of Maria’s clients needed was for their therapist to be suspected of seducing an under-aged teen.
“My clients don’t walk out of textbooks. Textbook answers won’t always help them.”
Gil leaned forward, warning her again.
“I hear you took a suicidal teen mountain climbing,” Collier said.
“We climbed the side of a ridge at a camp.” And she’d been scared half out of her wits.
“You also ran a marathon?”
“A half one.” With a woman who couldn’t stand still for fear her father’s sexual abuse would catch up with her.
For another client too afraid of public speaking to make a simple speech in his own boardroom, Maria had listened to late-night rehearsals on the phone until her ear was as cauliflowerlike as the most inept boxer’s.
She’d cooked meals and walked labyrinths and finally gone to the police when Griff Butler had refused to retract the confession she still doubted.
“You know how to make people comfortable. You make them trust you.”
She eyed him but said nothing.
“And you used what Griff Butler said in this notebook to make him your—”
She planted both business-casual heels on the floor. This man would not make her look incapable, even to save a kid she cared for. “I don’t know what he wrote.”
“Open it,” Buck said. “Read the pages you shared with my client at each meeting—including the ones outside your office.”
“I’ve never met Griff outside my office, Mr. Collier.”
“You’re formal with me, Dr. Keaton.” He made her title an insult. “But you dropped the decorum with Griffy, didn’t you?”
She let herself smile. The prototypical Southern lawyer had made an error. “Griff claims I called him that?” Insecurity plagued the boy. He’d feared that no one, not even his own mother and father, had loved him.
“Open the book, Dr. Keaton.”
She stared at Buck, pretending his peremptory tone amused her.
“Objection,” Gil said. “The defense is harassing Dr. Keaton. She has sworn under oath several times that she never read these pages. How can they be relevant?”
Jake’s exaggerated stillness was a warning. His bland expression suggested he’d expected Gil to come up with something more effective, which troubled Maria. At last, Jake looked at the defense. “Get to the point, Mr. Collier. Skip the commentary.”
“Did you have an affair with my underage client, Dr. Keaton?”
It hurt. Against her will, she glanced at Griff, who stared at nothing.
“Answer me, Dr. Keaton. Don’t look at that boy.”
“I did not have an affair with Griff. I wanted him to be well. I’m his psychologist. Nothing more.”
“You were his so-called therapist. After you broke doctor-client privilege, I believe his aunt fired you?”
His aunt was the only one left to fire her after his parents died. “Griff, you know why I told the police what you said.”
Jake’s seat came upright with a scream of springs. “Dr. Keaton, you will not—”
Buck pointed a vindictive finger. “You can’t control this boy now that he’s come to his senses. He understands you abused him.”
“Your Honor.” Gil went off like a rocket.
Maria turned to the jury, Griff’s last hope. He needed treatment, and they held the power. But Buck had come up with the perfect offensive defense. If the jury thought she’d seduced a kid in her care, they could set a possibly murderous boy free on their own unsuspecting community, on his younger cousins and their parents.
“I never hurt Griff. He and I discussed only the problems that brought him to my office, and none of those problems included an inappropriate relationship between us. I care about this boy as I care about all my clients, but I did not sleep with him.”
Jake banged his gavel once. “Dr. Keaton, Collier, Daley, this remains my courtroom, and you’re all perilously close to contempt.”
“I’m sorry.” She turned to him. His black gaze was a wall that bounced her back. “No one seems to realize what’s at stake for that kid.”
“You were telling us how deeply you care for my client, Dr. Keaton.” Collier leaped on her apparent weakness. “Enough to ruin his future after he rejected your sexual advances?”
Jake turned in his chair, silent, menacing. Behind Maria, the jury rustled like debris swept up in a tornado.
“Stop, Mr. Collier, or I’ll walk you to a cell myself.” Jake’s voice seemed to shatter Collier’s bloated confidence. “Bailiff, take the jury out.”
The men and women stepped on each other’s heels, trying to size up Maria. She glanced at Jake. His thoughts were as plain as Buck’s. Griff’s defense had already created at least one instance of reasonable doubt.
She
