Dawn Temple - Moonlight and Mistletoe

“Are you kidding? It was freezing out there. I’d have sent Travis instead.”

Shayna laughed and relaxed into the couch. Gosh, it was great to have such good friends.

“Seriously, though,” Lindy said. “What happened up there?”

“The stubborn fool followed me home to discuss the legal agreement Dr. Walker hired him to deliver, then on his way back to town, his car crashed into the ditch. He was banged up a little, and since the icy weather had us trapped, I let him stay in the spare room.”

“Did he behave?”

“For the most part. He even cooked Thanksgiving dinner.”

“He cooks? Amazing. So why’d you send him packing? Were you tempted to jump his bones?”

Shayna threw her free hand over her eyes. This was the drawback to good friends. Too good at reading between the lines.

“It just got too awkward, being around a stranger 24/7.”

“Uh-huh, I bet.” Lindy paused, but Shayna bit her tongue. Some things were too private even for the best of friends. The silence stretched for ten or fifteen seconds before Lindy wisely changed the subject. “So what’s the deal with Dr. Walker?”

Different subject, yes, but still not something Shayna wanted to discuss tonight. “It’s very complicated, too complicated for a phone call. How about I stop by tomorrow before the pageant for leftovers and tell you all about it?”

“Deal,” Lindy agreed. “Promise you’re okay?”

The love and concern in Lindy’s voice nearly choked Shayna up. Daddy might be gone, but that didn’t mean she had no family left.

“I promise.” She thumbed off the phone and sat up, staring blindly at the silent television. Actually she was looking forward to talking face-to-face with Lindy and Travis about the can of worms Kyle had opened. Even more than Chester Warfield, Shayna was anxious to hear Travis’s take on the situation.

As the oldest son of one of Atlanta’s wealthiest families, Travis knew all about the twisted thought processes of the superrich. If anyone could advise her on redirecting Steven Walker’s interest elsewhere, it would be Travis.

As for dealing with Kyle “Snake-In-The-Grass” Anderson, she’d have to figure that out for herself.

Saturday morning, Kyle kick-started his day with a carb overload in the Sheltering Arms communal dining room, but the boisterous crowd failed to distract him from his thoughts of Shayna and the way she’d dismissed him yesterday.

How the hell had such a simple job gotten so screwed up?

He’d been making progress before Patty’s phone call. Okay, so immediately before her call, the progress he’d been making hadn’t had a damn thing to do with the job, but before that, he had started making headway.

She’d begun opening up, had even shared vital information with him, and despite her lack of trust in him as a lawyer, he was sure she’d begun to like him as a man.

The clatter of dropped silverware broke into his thoughts, derailing him from thoughts of how she felt about him-and responded to him-as a man. He glanced up from his plate, only to encounter frowns from several of his breakfast companions. He inserted a more neutral expression and quickly finished his meal.

She may have waylaid his efforts by kicking him out of her home and refusing to listen to reason, but he still had a job to do. Excusing himself, he went upstairs to retrieve his briefcase.

Dressed in an off-the-rack suit he’d purchased yesterday, he left the boarding house and walked the six blocks into downtown Land’s Cross. He’d discovered an Internet café inside the small bookstore downtown, where he could check his e-mail and access the Internet.

He needed to follow up on the information Amanda had sent him Wednesday. Shayna had assured him that forging her duplicate birth certificate was the only illegal thing Miller had ever done, but if Kyle simply took her word for it, he’d be shirking his duty. Regardless of his personal feelings about Steven Walker, the man was his client and deserved Kyle’s best effort. That meant following every lead to its conclusion.

He needed to dig a little deeper into Miller’s background to see if any other criminal activity popped up. After all, very few law-abiding citizens knew how to locate a forger. His conscience cringed at his mercenary line of thinking. What if his investigation into Shayna’s dad uncovered something horrific? Sexual abuse? Drug use? A criminal history?

Confronting information like that about the father she loved would devastate Shayna. Was he willing to completely destroy her in order to satisfy a power-hungry client? To achieve a goal he wasn’t sure he still desired?

Of course, if she would simply agree to Walker’s terms, then whatever other skeletons James Miller may have would remain hidden.

And he could get off this damned ethical fence he’d been straddling. His feelings for Shayna made it difficult to execute his job swiftly and dispassionately. He’d never close this case and move on with his career if he continued to worry about seeing that wounded look in Shayna’s amber eyes rather than doing whatever it took to accomplish his client’s goal.

After ordering a large black coffee and settling into a red-and-beige striped couch, he fired up his laptop and accessed his e-mail. Despite the holiday weekend, he had more than two dozen messages. His clients knew he rarely took time off.

He had work piling up in California, and even though his partnership hinged on this case, if he ignored his other clients, he wouldn’t deserve the promotion. Partners were expected to juggle large and small cases. Time to prove he had what it took to earn a spot on the letterhead.

He fired off about a dozen directives for Amanda to handle Monday and called a few of his more agitated clients. Once he’d dealt with all the critical issues, he typed up a carefully worded report for Roscoe, alerting his boss to the delay in the case as well as his return to the West Coast.

Correspondence complete, he opened his computer file on the Walker case and began updating it. He paraphrased his “interviews” with Shayna, recording the details behind James Miller’s forging of her birth certificate with special care. Amanda had reported cold, hard facts. It was Shayna’s personal insight that gave the details power. He wanted to make sure his records were accurate, but at the same time, he didn’t want Walker to be able to use Shayna’s words against her.

After saving and closing the file, he logged in to the firm’s specialized search engine. The database provided personal, legal and governmental information most people thought was completely private.

It didn’t take him long to confirm Shayna’s assurances about James Miller’s character. The man was practically a Boy Scout. He’d received a grand total of two parking tickets over the course of his fifty-seven-year life, served jury duty three times and filed his income taxes faithfully.

A quick review of his returns showed that he’d never taken advantage of the child tax credit, so while Shayna’s dad apparently didn’t mind a little white lie to the school board, he wasn’t willing to intentionally defraud the IRS. He’d have to pass that along to Shayna. It couldn’t hurt for her to be prepared for whatever legal battles his client might stir up.

Damn it. That was exactly the kind of biased thinking he needed to avoid.

A musical chime from his computer alerted him to a fresh batch of e-mails. Several people had already responded to his earlier messages, but only one was red flagged: Roscoe’s. He wasn’t surprised that his boss was working on a holiday.

He double clicked it. When does she meet with her attorney? Walker is threatening a trip to Tennessee.