3

      JILL HURRIED toward the courthouse, her steps faltering when she spotted Morgan waiting for her. Her heart did a little flip in her chest, followed by a series of distinct thumps. The man was simply way too sexy, and to top it off, he was a great cook. She knew her way around the kitchen, but working long hours and living alone didn’t provide her with many opportunities to enrich her meager talent. Takeout and instant was about all she had the time or energy for these days.

      And there was just something incredibly seductive about a man cooking for a woman.

      “Good morning,” she called to him, surprised that her voice worked. Something about this guy short-circuited her senses, common and otherwise, and she was at a loss to figure out why.

      “Good morning,” he said in that voice she easily imagined whispering seductive words against her ear. Like good morning after a great night!

      She came to a stop in front of him and looked up, struggling to ignore the temptation of those sexy words her imagination conjured. His eyes were filled with concern for his employee, touching her heart and making her melt just a tiny bit. Her boss was right. Morgan was the quintessential nice guy. If she was seriously in the market for happily-ever-after, Morgan Price would no doubt be at the top of her list as a prime candidate.

      “Good news,” she told him, flashing him a grin she couldn’t have stopped even if her life was in jeopardy. He just did that to her. “Since you already paid for the damages Eddie caused, the bar owner has dropped the charges, so the only th…” She looked around, then back at Morgan. “Where is Eddie?”

      “Inside,” Morgan said, taking her elbow and steering her in the direction of the glass doors. “Waiting and scared.”

      He led her toward a wooden bench where a young man dressed in neatly pressed jeans, plaid shirt and solid blue tie waited, his foot tapping nervously on the tile floor. As they approached, he stood, his pale blue gaze darting from her to Morgan and back again.

      The first thing Jill noticed was the worry lining his features. The second was that Eddie Burton looked as if he’d be more comfortable in a lab dissecting frogs than getting roaring drunk and tearing up a neighborhood tavern. A shock of carrot-red hair was cut in a cropped style. His eyebrows were pulled together in a frown, wrinkling his heavily freckled forehead.

      Morgan introduced them, and Jill shook Eddie’s hand, smiling in hopes of setting him at ease. “It’s not all that bad,” she told both men. “The bar owner has dropped the charges, but there’s still the D&D charge to deal with.”

      “Am I going to jail again?” Eddie asked, the fear in his eyes and his voice all too real. She thought of Nick’s advice to let the public defender’s office handle the case. Considering the workload of the jaded public counsel, the chances of Eddie doing time, even if it was only a day or two, could have been very real. There was no way she was going to allow this frightened young man to spend another minute in custody.

      “No. You won’t go to jail,” she told him firmly, setting her briefcase on the bench. “The judge may order you to serve a probationary period or perhaps just some community service, but that’s if we actually do go to trial.”

      “What happens today?” Morgan asked.

      “Today is only the arraignment,” she said, then turned her attention back to Eddie. “The judge will ask you how you plead, and I want you to say not guilty. He’ll assign a trial date, and that’s all there is for today.”

      Eddie wouldn’t look at her. He stared down at the tips of his highly polished boots, instead. “But I did it,” he murmured so softly she had a difficult time hearing him.

      “That’s okay,” Jill explained, “but I don’t want you telling that to anyone other than me, okay?”

      When Eddie nodded, she continued. “The reason you plead not guilty is to give me time to establish a defense and to try to get the district attorney to drop or lessen the charges against you.”

      “Defense?” Morgan asked, his tone incredulous. “You think it’ll go that far?”

      “It’s possible,” she said, shifting her gaze to him. He raked a hand through his black-as-midnight hair, which looked as if he’d been finger-combing it for hours. “I won’t know for certain until Eddie and I get a chance to talk about what happened that night.”

      She settled her hand on Morgan’s forearm and tried to ignore the sparks of electricity shooting up her arm and spreading throughout her body with lightning speed. “Your paying the bar owner made a difference. It’s just a matter of me convincing the prosecution to drop the rest of the charges,” she said, concentrating on the case and not the way her breasts tingled and rasped against the satin cups of her bra.

      “Can you really do that?” Eddie asked, the hopeful note in his voice drawing her attention.

      “I’ll know more later,” she reassured him, letting her hand slip from Morgan’s arm. “You and I will need to talk first. Is there somewhere we can meet?”

      “My office,” Morgan said. “Later this afternoon.”

      Jill shook her head. “I can’t. I have—”

      “Excuse us a minute, Eddie.” Morgan took her arm and steered her a few feet away.

      “Am I or am I not paying for legal representation for my employee?”

      Jill frowned at the authoritative tone of his voice. “In a manner of speaking, yes, you are. But that doesn’t mean you can—”

      “I’d prefer it if you met with him at my office.” Determination replaced his earlier concern, which didn’t surprise her. From what she’d seen of his personality thus far, determination was one of his more mild qualities. Sexual magnetism ranked at the top.

      “But I don’t see—”

      “I need him on the job, Jill. Today. He’ll be back at the shop by four-thirty. Meet with him then, and hopefully you’ll have this mess wrapped up in a few days.”

      “It might not be that easy.” She had more pre-trial motions Nick was expecting, and he’d made it perfectly clear that she could handle this case for Morgan only if it didn’t interfere with her own caseload.

      “You said—”

      “I know what I said,” she told him, lowering her voice slightly, “but Eddie’s scared to death and I’m trying to set him at ease.” She glanced in her client’s direction. He’d returned to the bench and was again nervously tapping his boot on the tile. “It all depends on who’s been assigned from the D.A.’s office. If we get a seasoned A.D.A., I can probably have the case dismissed. But, if we get a recent grad anxious for some trial experience…”