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“I’m clueless,” I confess, burying my head in my hands. “I completely embarrassed myself today—twice.”
She frowns. “How so?”
“First, I believed a client’s story, and it turned out to be a complete lie.” I shudder, remembering the humiliating moment I had tried to sell the man’s story to the prosecutor.
My client didn’t shoplift that makeup. His girlfriend did. See, his jacket was in the grocery cart, and she snuck the makeup into the pockets without him knowing. After all, what use would he have for the makeup? Besides that, he’s on probation, and he’s well aware that another conviction, no matter how insignificant, will land him in prison. He simply wouldn’t risk his freedom for a few tubes of mascara.
It had sounded so plausible. So believable. I’d swallowed the story whole and regurgitated it to the prosecutor word for word. To her credit, she didn’t call me an idiot. She simply looked at me like I’d grown a second head, informed me that the store had over one hundred surveillance cameras, and turned her laptop in my direction so I could watch the video of my client shoving mascara into his pockets like a contestant on Supermarket Sweep.
I wanted to run from the courtroom in tears, as I had in the fourth grade during my class speech on Fraces Key Scott… or is it Fraces Scott Key? To this day, I still get it confused, and I have a tendency to break into a cold sweat whenever I hear the Star Bangled Banner.
But the incident with the prosecutor, and even that fateful speech in the fourth grade, is nothing compared to the embarrassment of telling off Jonah Griffin for talking to my client without a lawyer present, only to then find out that the defendant had waived his right to one. There’s just something about Jonah that gets under my skin. I hate looking foolish in front of him, but somehow, I always do. Every time I’ve questioned him on the stand in the past month, I’ve stuttered and stammered my way through the cross-examination like the little girl who kept tripping over Frances Scott Key’s name. Frances Key Scott?
“Earth the Cressida,” Petra says, waving a hand in my face.
“Sorry,” I say, glancing at her. “I was lost in my thoughts.”
“Obviously,” she says with a laugh. “So, a client lied to you? That’s an everyday occurrence, my friend. Take it from me.”
“People lie to their hairstylist? Why?”
“Maybe they think if they impress me with the most outlandish story, I’ll do a better job on their hair? Who knows? But we’re talking about you right now, not me. So, what was the second embarrassing thing that happened?”
I take a long sip of my margarita. “Just an incident with a know-it-all cop.”
“Speaking of delicious men in uniform…” Petra says, eyeing someone over my shoulder.
My heart rate kicks into overdrive. Somehow, I just know, deep in my gut, that she’s looking at Jonah right now. I don’t even have to turn my head. I can feel his eyes on my back. My skin grows hot under his gaze.
I take a shaky breath. “I said know-it-all, Petra. Not delicious.” But as much as I hate to admit it, Jonah is that, too. He is a beautiful specimen of a man, all chiseled muscles and wavy hair and glacier-blue eyes. There’s no point in denying the obvious.
He walks past my booth, brushing his fingertip lightly on my arm as he passes. The touch sends a jolt of electricity running through my entire body. I stare at his back as he walks away without so much as a glance in my direction. Did he touch me on purpose? Or was it an accident?
Petra grins at me. “My grandmother told me that she heard him talking to his brother about you the other day.”
My skin flushes. “Who? What? I d-don’t know who you’re talking about.”
She rolls her eyes. “I’m talking about Officer Jonah Griffin. The sexy man that you’re pretending not to notice right now. But you can’t fool me, Cressida. I’ve known you forever, and I can tell when you have the hots for someone.”
I sink in my chair and lower my head. “Keep your voice down,” I hiss. “I do not have the hots for Officer Griffin.”
Petra rolls her eyes. “You don’t want to know what Betty Lou heard him say about you then?”
Of course, I want to know!
“What did he say?” I ask in a small voice.
She leans forward, grinning. “He was at the neighborhood pool with his brother, Hunter, and she overheard him say that—” She holds her fingers in the air, forming quotation marks. “—the new public defender is a spitfire.”
I frown. “That’s not exactly a compliment.”
“The point is, he was talking about you!”
“Uh-huh.” I break a breadstick in half, jabbing it angrily into the marinara. A spitfire?
“The two of you would make beautiful babies.”
“Petra!”
