Her Guilty Secret. Clare Connelly
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force of a hurricane. Lightning dances between us, thunder rolls. His expression is a challenge and, despite the simplicity of the question, my mouth is dryer than desert sand. I feel like I’ve chewed on a box of chalk. I can’t find my tongue.
‘The chain of evidence,’ he prompts, lifting one brow with a hint of sarcastic mockery that makes me want to reach for his shirt and bunch it in my fist.
‘Obviously,’ I say, quietly, so that he leans forward a little, to catch my softly spoken word, ‘to ensure the authenticity of the evidence.’
‘Wrong.’
My eyes flare wide and I feel heat in my cheeks. I don’t like being told I’m wrong. I’m not wrong. ‘Why?’
His eyes lock onto mine. It’s just the two of us here now. Us and our major electrical storm, humming and buzzing through the room. ‘It doesn’t matter if the evidence has been tampered with.’
‘Of course it does,’ I say with a shake of my head.
‘No.’ His smile is the last word in sexual heat. My insides flip around, bubbling and aching, distracting me momentarily from what we’re discussing. ‘It matters what you can suggest. Facts are less important than the doubt you can cast.’
My eyes narrow. He’s hit upon my biggest problem with his application of the law. Connor Hughes, while undoubtedly a genius, earned his name and his fortune wielding that mega-watt intelligence to get bad guys out of prison sentences that they definitely deserve. ‘Facts don’t matter?’
He comes around to the front of the desk and props his ass on its edge, his long legs stretched out in front of him. He’s wearing a suit, but he’s taken off the jacket and pushed his sleeves halfway up his forearms. God, they’re nice arms. Tanned and leanly muscled. There’s a small tattoo on his inner wrist. A cross, but a Celtic-looking one. It is incongruous for a man like this, who must surely be Godless. He also doesn’t suit a suit.
I mean, he wears it like it was made for him, but there’s such a savagery to him. I could see him in a loincloth, beating his chest... The thought heats my cheeks and almost makes me smile.
‘Facts don’t matter,’ he says with a nod. The class laughs. I don’t.
‘Why not?’ I’m challenging him. I’m pissed off and my voice shows it by quivering a little.
‘Facts are subjective, in law.’ His response is really deep and husky. Airy, and full of weight.
‘Facts can’t be subjective.’ I glare at him as though he’s lost the plot. ‘That’s oxymoronic.’
‘Why?’
‘Because facts just are!’
‘Says who?’ His eyes are locked onto mine and the intensity of his scrutiny is doing funny things to my pulse. I suspect I’d find it easier to concentrate on what he’s saying if I wasn’t imagining him as a modern-day Tarzan, lifting me up and carrying me to his treetop den of debauchery. ‘Says who?’ he pushes insistently.
‘Says everyone.’
He looks around the class. ‘There are forty-eight students in here. True or false.’
I narrow my eyes then spin in my chair, with every intention of counting.
‘No,’ he says firmly, and his commanding tone sends a shiver down my spine. I imagine him being commanding in other ways, other places, and my gut churns with delicious desire. ‘Without looking.’
I turn back slowly in my chair, crossing my legs beneath the small wooden desk. Holy shit. Did I just imagine the way his eyes dropped down to my bare legs? I uncross them to test the theory but his gaze remains steady, and now there’s just the hint of a smile at the corners of his mouth. My heart throbs.
‘I don’t know.’
‘There are forty-eight students enrolled. Is anyone absent?’
‘I don’t know.’ I sound frustrated because I am.
‘That’s reasonable doubt.’
I roll my eyes. ‘It’s not my job to keep an attendance record. If it were, I’d know how many of us are here.’
‘What about the witness who swears he saw two men entering a bakery at two in the morning? It’s not his job to notice who goes where. How do you know he remembers accurately?’
I expel a soft breath. ‘I guess you have to trust him.’
‘You have to trust him?’ His smile is curt. ‘I don’t. I don’t trust anyone’s recollection beyond reasonable doubt.’
His eyes lock onto mine once more and then shift slightly lower, to the front of my dress, where a pretty row of white buttons dots downwards. He stares at them for a good three seconds. Long enough for my insides to begin quivering and heat to slick between my legs.
Then he moves on, as though he hasn’t almost brought me to orgasm simply by flicking a glance at my dress.
‘We’re looking at how facts are represented in court.’ The class has his attention now and I try to level out my breathing. ‘How you can pull apart a prosecutor’s case, piece by piece. Nothing is too small for your attention. You check every detail. Why was there a fifteen-minute delay between a police officer arriving at the station and items being logged? What happened in those fifteen minutes? Did he stop to talk to someone in the corridor? Did he take a piss? Where’d he put the evidence while he was zipping up? Could someone else have touched it? Even for a moment?’
Indignation spurts like a wave of angry heat in my belly. My jaw drops, and I know my cheeks are flushing pink. I hate everything about what Connor has just said. I hate that he’s teaching it to a whole room of us.
He doubles down, leaning forward slightly to underscore his point, and when he speaks his voice is loaded with intensity.
‘That’s reasonable doubt. That’s uncertainty. The law is never black and white, no matter how much you might want it to be, Miss Amorelli.’ My stomach lurches, and it’s with desire now, not indignation. How can he send me from one emotion to the other in no time flat? No matter how much you might want it to be, Miss Amorelli. I want his tongue around more than my name. It’s his Irish accent and the way it lilts across the syllables, making it sound musical and illicit, somehow. ‘Not in the real world. It’s about a thousand shades of grey. It’s about making a jury doubt. About making a judge wonder.’
‘That’s disgusting.’ I say it quietly, with my head bent forward, so I don’t know if he hears. I don’t care. My face is flushed bright red.
I’ve seen what Connor’s thinking does to people. I’ve seen what it did to my dad, a senior detective who had a case thrown out because someone like Connor was able to discredit his work. I saw the way it pulled my dad apart—the knowledge that he’d let the victim down by not being above reproach. And it had all been bogus. A big, fat lie that had practically killed my dad.
I grind my teeth and glare at him. Anger, apparently, is what I need. It trumps desire.
Good. I’ll just have to stay angry for the next month or so.
* * *
‘Miss Amorelli.’
I’m almost at the door when he calls my name. It would be so easy to pretend I haven’t heard. I’m almost out—so close—albeit on legs that are a little shaky. It’s the end of the day and I just want to get home and have a cold shower and take myself to bed. And fantasise about this arrogant, sexy beast of a man.
But he’s right here and he’s said my name.
I’m not exactly in the business of ignoring my professors. I’m someone who does everything that’s asked of me. Besides, I’d be lying to myself if I pretended I wasn’t intrigued. The hurricane around us swells, cracks; a shiver runs the length of my spine in anticipation.