of the midlevel associates at the firm, Leroy Ripp, sent Diana a look of open disdain as he shuffled toward the door.
“Nice going, Mason,” he said, his whisper hot with ill humor. “Now we have to waste fifteen minutes out of every hour filling out one of his idiotic forms.”
She didn’t answer Leroy. No point. Whenever Leroy got angry at anything, he ended up angry at everything. Vincent had already made his decision to institute the new time-tracking procedure. Nothing she nor anyone else had said in this meeting would have affected the outcome.
As Diana headed toward the door of the conference room, Gail Loftin, another one of her colleagues, fell into step beside her.
“Was Leroy accusing you of crossing over to the Dark Side?” Gail asked, a big grin on her face.
Diana chuckled.
She’d known Leroy for three years, Gail for nine months. All the words in the world wouldn’t get a point across to Leroy. Gail often understood without any.
“What’s gotten Leroy in such a foul mood these days?” Diana asked.
“Our favorite prosecutor creamed him in court last week.”
“Ah.” Diana knew Gail meant Silver Valley’s thoroughly detestable Chief Prosecutor, George Staker. Although she’d never classify Leroy as a friend, at this moment she felt for him.
“Hard not to take it personally sometimes,” Diana said. “At least three of our other attorneys have lost cases to Staker recently. Getting to be a damn epidemic.”
“Except Leroy keeps insisting that Staker knew things he shouldn’t have when they went to trial. I overheard Leroy tell Ronald that there must be a mole in our office.”
Diana shook her head. “Shoot me before I get that paranoid.”
“You have my promise,” Gail said, unlocking the door to her office. “Come in for a minute. I need to talk to you.”
As soon as Diana had stepped inside, Gail firmly closed the door behind them.
“I heard you got the Pearce case.”
“Ronald gave it to me a couple of weeks ago when you were tied up in that trial on the coast,” Diana confirmed. “He told me Earl said the case conflicted with another one he had.”
“What the case conflicts with is his drive to become a junior partner,” Gail said, the irritation thick in her tone as she circled her desk and plopped onto the chair.
Yes, Diana had figured that as well.
With Gail’s smarts, experience and expertise, she should be a shoo-in for the junior partner slot that the Kozen brothers had dangled before her eyes to get her to join the expanding private law firm of Kozen and Kozen.
But Earl Payman was vying for the position as well. Although Earl possessed not one tenth of Gail’s talent or experience, he wore Armani suits, had finagled a membership in the private club the Kozen brothers belonged to and always said the politically correct thing. Gail wore a size fourteen bought off the rack, never played golf and often made the mistake of speaking her mind.
That latter failing was one Diana shared with her friend.
“You shouldn’t have let Ronald dump the Pearce case on you,” Gail said.
Diana snorted in amusement as she slipped onto Gail’s guest chair. “You think I had some choice when our beloved senior partner charged into my office, dropped the file on my desk and said, ‘You need to take over this court-appointed defense case that goes to trial in two months, so get up to speed’?”
Gail exhaled heavily. “I’m sorry. Of course, you didn’t have an option. I’m only mad at the unfairness of seeing this happen to you.”
“Don’t be,” Diana said as she stretched her arms above her head, trying to encourage some circulation back into her shoulders after sitting hunched over for so long in that pointless meeting. “I know Ronald only gave it to me because everyone else probably ran the other way when they saw him coming. But I’m glad I’ve got it.”
Gail rested her elbows on the desk, regarding Diana gravely. “When I was in the prosecutor’s office last year and the sheriff’s reports landed in my in-basket, I was salivating in anticipation of taking the case to trial. A prosecution like that can make a career, which is why Staker grabbed the case right out from under me. Diana, the evidence is so overwhelming there’s no way you can come out looking good.”
“The case may not be as open and shut as everyone thinks.”
Gail’s eyebrows climbed her forehead as she inched forward in her chair. “You know something that no one else does?”
A knock came on the door. Gail looked decidedly put out at the interruption. “Come in,” she called out.
The door popped open and Kelli, the firm’s receptionist, poked her head inside.
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” Kelli said, oddly out of breath, “but Mr. Knight is waiting at my desk. Do you want me to show him to your office?”
Diana’s eyes went to her watch. Startled to see the time, she shot to her feet. “No, Kelli. I’ll see him now.” She headed for the door. “We’ll talk later, Gail.”
“Make that sooner,” Gail said. “You can’t keep me hanging like this.”
Chuckling at Gail’s frustrated look, Diana followed Kelli toward the reception area. She was looking forward to getting Gail’s opinion on several sticky aspects of the case. Having worked both sides of the legal fence, Gail was a wealth of insight.
But first Diana had to get things moving on Connie Pearce’s defense, which meant this meeting with the private investigator couldn’t be delayed. Still, the second she saw the man waiting for her, she came to an immediate and startled stop.
He was in his early thirties, over six feet, wearing a deep-blue, hand-tailored suit that emphasized his wide shoulders and long legs. His thick, dark hair had been sculpted, not cut. His Technicolor blue eyes, wide-screen smile and leading-man features could easily stop a female heart at fifty feet.
Dear heavens, it was Jack Knight. No wonder Kelli was so breathless. White Knight Investigations had sent her an actor!
Diana cursed to herself. What in the hell was she going to do now?
JACK FOLLOWED DIANA as she led the way to her office, his smile broadening. Well, well. The lawyer he’d be working for was a knockout—despite a formless gray business suit and no makeup—and she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. This had to be fate.
No, not fate, he corrected. Opportunity. He didn’t believe in fate, but he sure as hell believed in opportunity.
He caught a whiff of her scent, something cool and sweet he couldn’t quite place. She was maybe thirty and at least five-eight. Her gleaming black hair was gathered with a silver clip at the nape of her neck and fell to the middle of her back.
The way the light caught the curves of her face, highlighted her hair and settled in the soft centers of
