you speaking from personal experience? Is that what you would do in a similar situation?” Brenna went on the offense, her chin rising defiantly. “Or maybe you’ve already done it, for all I know.” She didn’t meet his eyes.
“No! I didn’t—I wouldn’t—I’ve never—” Luke paused when the attorney for Brad, the plaintiff, stood and began to present his opening argument.
Brad sat at the table, listening to his side being presented, nodding his head at every point. His former fiancée, Amber, visibly bristled, grimaced and vehemently shook her head in disagreement.
Everybody in the jury box stared at the feuding former lovers—everybody except Luke Minteer, whose eyes remained riveted on Brenna.
He leaned a little closer to her, his voice low in her ear. “Don’t try to turn this around and sling mud at me, lady. This isn’t about me.”
“True. It has nothing to do with you,” she murmured between clenched teeth. “And please stop talking. The judge is giving us a dirty look.”
“And God forbid we get on the wrong side of His Honor,” taunted Luke. “We might get thrown off the jury. Wow, that would be a heavy price to pay.”
“Excuse me.” The judge pounded his gavel, interrupting the attorney. “Jurors nine and ten, conversation will be conducted outside the courtroom, not during the trial. I don’t want to have to mention this again.” He glowered at Brenna and Luke.
Brenna blushed and she stared at the floor. Luke shrugged, scowling, but unintimidated by the reprimand.
“Don’t look so guilty,” he whispered to Brenna a moment later. “It’s not like we’re criminals on trial here. We’re the ones giving up our time to do our civic duty so that Brad and Amber can stick it to each—”
“Will you please shut up!” Brenna said desperately. “We’re going to get jailed for contempt of court or something if you keep—”
“Juror nine!” thundered the judge, glaring at Brenna.
She slumped lower in her chair. “I’m sorry, Your Honor.”
“She isn’t feeling well, Your Honor,” Luke spoke up. “She is very advanced in her pregnancy and needs to take a break right now. If you would be kind enough to excuse her for a few minutes…” He stared at the judge expectantly.
The judge looked nonplussed. “I…see. All right, we’ll all take a ten-minute break. Court resumes in ten minutes.” He strode from the courtroom.
“If we take ten-minute breaks every ten minutes, this trial will never end,” one attorney complained to the other, loud enough to be heard in the jury box.
“You guys are the ones who picked a very pregnant woman to be on your jury,” Luke called back to them. “So live with it, boys.”
“I’m going to the rest room,” Brenna murmured, and quickly left the courtroom.
Luke was in the corridor standing against the wall when she emerged from the bathroom. She would have walked past him, but he approached her.
“I came to your rescue,” he said proudly. “Pretty fast thinking on my part, hmm?”
“Is that how you see yourself? A kind of gallant knight in shining armor?” Brenna headed directly to the courtroom, Luke at her side. “What you seem to forget is that you’re the reason I got in trouble in the first place.”
“Honey, you got in trouble long before I came on the scene.”
“If that’s an attempt at wit,” Brenna ground out, “it failed.”
“Mmm-hmm. So you were dumped by the daddy when you told him you were pregnant?” Luke surmised with a knowing nod. “You wouldn’t be so defensive and angry unless I’d really hit a nerve.”
“I’m not defensive but, yes, I’m angry. Because you’re a…a—”
“Jerk,” Luke supplied amiably. “Weasel. Snake. Rat. I’ve been called all those things and much worse. Deservedly, too, no doubt. But I never knocked up a woman and walked away, leaving her, uh, holding the baby. Literally. I don’t blame you for being furious, and if it helps to direct your rage at me, go ahead. Your boyfriend is lower than fungus slime and—”
“I don’t have any rage to direct at you or anyone else!” Brenna exclaimed, exasperated. “I don’t have a boyfriend who dumped me when he found out about the baby, either. There is no boyfriend and never was. Period.”
Luke said nothing. They walked to their seats and sat down. They were the first two jurors to return to the box.
“Go on, ask me,” Brenna growled, after a few more moments of Luke’s silence. Oddly enough, it disturbed her more than his questions and speculations. “I can almost hear what you’re thinking. So just say it.”
“I’m not one to criticize anyone else for being impulsive.” His lips quirked into a wry smile. “I used to call it being spontaneous back when I was your age.”
“Back when you were my age?” Brenna scoffed. “That wasn’t so long ago, was it? It’s not like you were in World War II with Sarge and company.”
“I’m thirty-five and it’s been a long time since I was—” Luke gazed down at her. “Twenty-one?” he guessed. “And crossing the line from spontaneous to indiscriminate can result in—”
“I’m twenty-six. And having my baby wasn’t an impulsive act, it—” She broke off and stared at him, aghast. “You think that I had multiple spontaneous one-night stands and wasn’t careful?”
“You said you could hear what I was thinking,” he reminded her.
“I didn’t think it was that!” Her voice rose in indignation. “Ick! Sleeping around indiscriminately? You might have, but I would never do that.”
“Don’t get too self-righteous, honey. You’re pregnant, and that means at least one sexual encounter with at least one man. Since you were so adamant about not having a boyfriend, naturally, I assumed you’d, er, scored with more than one guy and didn’t know which one was the father of your baby. Not that I’m condemning you for that,” he added. “I’m very open-minded.”
“How generous of you!”
“I guess I might’ve sounded a bit self-righteous myself there.” Chagrined, Luke took a deep breath. “I apologize.”
“Don’t bother, because it doesn’t apply. Just because you scored with a string of one-night stands doesn’t mean that I did. And I do know who the father of my baby is. I personally selected him. He’s a medical student, tall, blue-eyed and blond, of Swedish-English ancestry, with no inherited diseases in his family. He has a strong bent toward the sciences but also enjoys music and sports, particularly—”
“You sound like you’re reading a description out of a catalog.” Luke’s dark-blue eyes widened suddenly. “Good Lord, that’s what you did, isn’t it? That’s how you picked this guy, from a…a sperm bank catalog?”
She didn’t
