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‘Everyone suffers if the justice system breaks down. You talk about wanting to help the wrongly accused. How many more would be wrongly accused, lazily charged, if there were no accountability to police and investigators?’
‘I think most police officers are inherently good. That they want to see justice done. I trust them to see the case as it is.’
I can’t help my laugh. ‘Come on, Olivia. You’re smarter than that. Checks and balances are the only way any of this works. Police officers can’t be given free rein to investigate and prosecute, just like victims’ families can’t decide penalties. We hold the police to a standard that we all expect.’
I lift a finger to her lips, stalling the argument she’s about to make. ‘If you were in the wrong place at the wrong time, would you rather have a legal system that enables the police officer who walks in and finds you standing over a dead body to decide summarily against you? Or would you prefer to know that you would have a chance to explain? That the police officer would have to follow rules and procedures. And that if he didn’t you would be exonerated. Mistakes happen. But this, what we have, has been refined over centuries to give most people a chance at fairness. There are safeguards in place to make the system as fair as possible.’
‘It isn’t fair, though.’
‘No.’ I nod grimly. ‘Until mankind rises above its very nature, there’s nothing fair in life or law.’
Her eyes lift to mine and there’s speculation in them that runs through me, turning over all the pieces of my being I have long-ago learned to keep locked away from others.
‘Who was that lady with you tonight?’
The question isn’t what I expect and I welcome it. There is a heaviness in the air resulting from our conversation.
‘In the red dress,’ she prompts thoughtfully.
‘Cynthia Payne.’
‘A friend of yours?’
I close the distance between us and she draws in a shallow breath, then expels it; warmth and sweetness brush against my jaw so that I am reminded of the first time we crossed this line—after class. ‘I knew you were going to be trouble, the first time I saw you.’
A blush spreads in her cheeks. I’m fascinated by it—as I am by everything to do with this woman. ‘I think that’s the first time I’ve ever been called trouble,’ she says with a small self-deprecating smile that hits me right in the chest.
‘That makes it no less true.’
Her eyes are huge. I could get lost in them. She blinks up at me, and my whole body is attuned to her and what she wants, because it’s what I want, too. Her teeth press down on her lower lip and then, despite the fact she’s standing there like some kind of modern-day Madonna, she lifts her hands to my bow tie and begins to undo it. There is concentration on her features, and her fingers aren’t quite steady. Her breath is rushed. But I don’t make a move to help her. In fact, I hold my own breath, wondering if she’s caught in a trance and I will wake her if I speak.
‘The first time I saw you,’ she says, succeeding with the bow tie, removing it and dropping it softly to the ground, ‘I imagined you naked.’
She lifts her eyes to mine and smiles, but I don’t. Her words have a strange effect on me, locking something inside me.
‘Really?’ I manage to drag out, the word gruff.
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Do you make a habit of imagining your professors in the buff?’
I’m rewarded with another smile. ‘Just the hot ones.’
She’s joking but a flare of something worryingly like jealousy bursts inside me.
‘Just you,’ she clarifies after a minute, and her trembling fingers find the top button of my shirt. She works it loose.
‘Professor Winterbourne has nice hair,’ I say, and she laughs then, and it’s like music and sunshine in this cold, exquisitely elegant penthouse of mine.
‘It wasn’t your hair I liked.’
‘What was it?’
Her expression is teasing. She frees another button. ‘You don’t strike me as a man who’s hungry for praise.’
Something jerks in my chest. Because she’s right and yet I’m filled with a desperate need to hear Olivia’s praise—all of it. It’s absurd. A stupid instinct. I ignore it.
She frees another button and then another, and her fingertips graze my chest when, at last, she separates the shirt completely. Her eyes devour my chest, trailing heat with the intensity of her gaze as she reads each and every ink I have scored there.
