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“But…” He let the word hang between them as he pulled back to study her. Somehow, in the moonlight, with his hair ruffled from her fingers, he was even more breathtaking, and this gorgeous man wanted to take her to bed.
“Nobuts,” she assured him. “More like ahowever.”
“Howeveris simply a fancybut.”
“True.” She trailed a finger along his jaw. “But I prefer to look at it in a less negative light. More like an addendum.”
“Spoken like a true lawyer.”
“Job hazard, I’m afraid.” She stepped back. She needed space to say this. “I should give you full disclosure before we go any further, okay?”
He nodded. “I respect that, but I doubt anything you say will change how much I want you. Everyone has darkness in their past. I understand that better than most.”
The change was subtle, and she couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but something in his expression flickered. For a split second, he appeared to drift into memories, but the look was there and gone so fast that she wondered if she’d imagined it.
“My dad did a number on me,” she began, “and it messed me up for a long time. I’m talking about clinical depression, anxiety, and PTSD. It took meyearsto get to a place where I could just function. During high school and my first three years of college, I didn’t have any friends. I couldn’t open myself up to people. Trust wasn’t in my wheelhouse. I only had Preston, but slowly, with him and my therapist’s help, I was able to make friends. By the time I was in law school, I was able to go on a few dates, but…”
She turned to the water. She’d started rambling. She still needed to get the rest out, but that proved harder to say than she’d expected.
“Emma…” He drew a hand down her hair. “Are you trying to tell me you’re a virgin?”
“Yes, but also no. What I’m trying to tell you is that I have trouble connecting with people. It’s not like I haven’t tried, Noah, but intimacy is so, well, intimate. I’ve just never been able to gettherewith anyone. I feel too vulnerable and exposed. It’s the only time I can’t get the voices in my head to shut up, the darker ones, the ones that try to tell me I’m ugly or stupid or fat or whatever.”
“Look at me.” With a gentle touch, he turned her so that they again faced each other. “When we go to bed, I can guarantee you that if anyone is thinking any of those things about you, it won’t be me.”
Whennotif.
Why did that excite her so much?
“I want to make love to you, Noah. You’re the first person I’ve ever said that to. I just need...” She shook her head. “Heck, I don’t even know what I need. Time, I guess, to get used to the idea.”
“How about this?” He gathered her into his arms. “When you’re ready, you’ll tell me.”
“I can do that.”
“Good. I want you, Emma, and when you’re ready, we’ll both know the time is right.”
“All rise.The Honorable Ryan Hutchinson presiding.”
Beside Emma at counsel’s table, Noah pushed to his feet. Nearly three weeks had passed sinceAbuela’sparty, and Noah’s desire to take a big, succulent bite of Emma hadn’t diminished. Just the opposite, his appetite had only grown stronger. He was doing his best to honor his pledge not to push her, but that proved more difficult than he’d imagined.
He wanted to show her the high life, wanted to show her off, but given who he was, the tabloids loved him, and the leeches seemed to have nothing better to do than print gossip about him. If he took Emma out and someone spotted them, she wouldn’t have a private life anymore. The painful past she’d yet to fully tell him about would be laid bare for all to see, so he’d kept their dates low-key and out of the public’s eye, which created an entirely new problem. He also wanted to keep their dates outside of their homes, where they had easy access to beds, so there’d been lots of secluded dates over takeout on floor twenty-seven of Whitlow Tower as it was currently being renovated.
The judge settled at his bench, and everyone sat. The judge’s thinning white hair and the lines on his face made him look as if he’d spent too many decades dealing with the worst humanity offered, but when he looked in Noah’s direction—no Emma’s—his expression softened. A smile split his face, and his eyes twinkled behind his rimmed spectacles.
“Ms. Morgan, it’s been too long since you’ve last been in my courtroom.”
“My apologies, Your Honor. I’ve been trying hard to stay on the straight and narrow these days.”
The judge laughed, a full-bellied sound that had Noah smiling, too. He’d been inside a courtroom more times than he cared to count, so he knew friendly banter between judges and attorneys was standard fare, but he’d never heard a judge laugh like that.
Noah snuck a peek at Emma. Outside Isadora’s, when he’d seen her in moon glow beside the water, he thought he’d never seen a more beautiful woman. She’d had a naivete that made every male aspect inside him stand up to defend and to protect, but seeing her here, in her element, was something new altogether. Confidence radiated off her like sunlight bouncing off jewels scattered on the desert floor. She was a treasure who didn’t fully know her value. The woman and the lawyer might share a body, but their confidence didn’t originate from the same well. He wondered if there was anything he could do to fix that.
“As always, Counselor, it’s a pleasure to see you again.”
“Likewise, Your Honor.”
The judge turned his attention to the lone man at opposing counsel’s table. Franklin Bishop wore black pants and a light-blue button-down that looked as if neither had ever seen an iron. Noah could say something similar about the man’s hair and a brush. The brown strands stood out in dozens of different directions. He looked as if he’d crawled out of bed, tossed on the first clothing he’d found on the floor, and ran straight to court.
