Tori Carrington - Unbridled

LANEY CARTWRIGHT GAZED OUT her tenth-floor office window. It was lunchtime and Bryan Street bustled with life. Life that would vanish after five when everyone scrambled to their homes in the suburbs, leaving Dallas a ghost town dotted with the few tourists and conventioneers who dared peek outside their hotels.

She hadn’t been in the windowed office very long. For the past three years she’d worked in a glorified cubicle on the open floor, one of many associate attorneys competing for a shot at the few offices that went up for grabs. Despite her impeccable résumé, she’d worked long and hard for this promotion to junior firm attorney. Eighty-hour weeks, carrying the load of three, burning the candle at both ends and the middle so that she barely had time to sleep, much less have a personal life.

Maybe that was the reason she’d been preoccupied ever since the legal secretary she shared with two other attorneys told her that a certain Mr. Carter Southard had called that morning to make an appointment. Violet had said there was nothing open, but he’d persisted, saying he needed no more than a couple of minutes and that it was important.

Important.

So Laney had told her to pencil something in during the lunch hour. Seeing Carter would at least keep her from thinking too much about the menacing note she’d received that morning.

Now she swiveled her desk chair away from the window and considered the case file open in front of her. When was the last time she’d had sex?

She twisted her lips. That was it, wasn’t it? The fact that her love life had been nonexistent for so long was allowing her to daydream about what it might be like to act on that spark of attraction she’d felt two months ago, even though the jail jumpsuit and unshaven appearance of Carter Southard should have been enough to turn her off.

But it hadn’t. Instead, in the first two weeks following their meeting, she found herself drifting off mid-conversation during social dinners and even phone calls, her concentration broken by the brief flash of Carter’s strong hands. The granite set of his jaw. The half grin he’d given her when he apparently realized she returned the interest he displayed, however reluctantly.

What was she talking about? The sensation had taken her so much by surprise, there hadn’t been a chance for her to be reluctant about anything.

Besides, she wouldn’t be seeing him again. So what was the harm in returning his smile, letting him see what she was thinking? Saying without words, “Gee, Carter, another time, another place, you and me might have had a good time together. A very good time, indeed.”

Laney swallowed hard, realizing that this was another time. And another place. And she was actually looking forward to seeing if that potential for a good time still existed. Oh, she didn’t intend to act on it. But that brief interaction with Carter had been enough to fuel some interesting late-night sessions alone up until…well, even last night.

The intercom button buzzed. Laney picked up the phone. “Yes?”

The forty-five-year-old secretary said, “Your father on line one. He wants to know why you canceled lunch.”

“Tell him I have an important meeting.”

Silence.

Laney sighed. “I’ll talk to him.” She pressed the button for the correct line and then leaned back in her chair. “Hi, Daddy.”

“Hi, yourself. So what’s this I hear you’ve canceled our lunch today?”

“Sorry about that. A new development on the Mac-Gregor case came up and I’ve scheduled a strategy lunch to work it out.”

Laney didn’t lie to her father often. Mostly because he knew her better than anyone and immediately spotted an untruth. He would never go so far as to say it, but the few times she had relied on deception to hide her intentions had always ended with them both knowing where they stood.

She supposed that’s what happened when you were so close. After her mother passed away when she was twelve, Laney and her father had formed a bond that transcended parent and child. He was her best friend.

“What’s the development?”

Laney blanched. Exhibit A on why she should never lie to her father.

Of course, he knew everything that was happening with State v. MacGregor, the case that had dominated her life for the past two months. The case that had also dominated the local and statewide news media, what with her young client accused of first-degree murder during an armed robbery.

The crime itself wasn’t so much what garnered interest. Rather it was the fact that Devon MacGregor came from one of the wealthiest families in Texas.

“I received an interesting note this morning,” she said quietly.

“Note?”

Laney hadn’t planned on saying anything about it just then, but she figured she would have told her father sooner or later, so she might as well use it to her benefit now.

“Yes. Plain block letters. ‘Drop MacGregor. Or else.’”

“Or else what?”

Laney sighed and fished out the note she’d placed in a Ziploc bag from the papers on her desk. “Your guess is as good as mine,” she said.

“Have you given it to the police?”

“I have a call in. I was told a detective will stop by sometime this afternoon.”

“Good.”

There was a brief knock on the door. “Your twelve o’clock is here,” Violet said.

Laney felt as if her stomach were full of a thousand butterflies flapping their wings to get out.

“Look, Daddy, people are beginning to arrive for the meeting.”

She quickly said her goodbyes, hoping that she wasn’t being too transparent, then left both hands on the telephone after she’d hung up.

“Hello again,” Carter said from the open doorway.

Laney nearly knocked the receiver from its cradle and she fumbled to right it again.

She looked at the man responsible for her duplicity…and discovered that the hectic sensation she’d experienced two months ago was nothing compared with the one the cleaned-up version of Carter Southard made on her now.

What he wore was nothing special—a denim shirt, jeans and cowboy boots. It was the details that did Laney in. The way his sleeves were rolled up over his corded forearms. The cocky way he stood that pulled his well-worn jeans just so across his groin. The scuffed boots that proved he was a man who didn’t wear them just for show, but had earned every last speck of Texas dust fused to the old leather.

In Carter’s case, he wore the clothes—the clothes didn’t wear him.

She looked up to find him grinning knowingly and the bottom dropped out of her stomach altogether, freeing the butterflies there.

Oh, boy. It looked as though she was going to have to get used to her father’s concerned reaction because she had the feeling that she was going to be doing a whole hell of a lot of lying in the foreseeable future.

OH, YES. This was exactly what Carter was looking for. Laney Cartwright’s heated reaction to his appearance would stroke any man’s ego; to his, it was a much-needed boost.

It wasn’t often his path crossed with women of her class. Just seeing her sitting behind that expensive desk in her navy blue suit, her white-blond hair slicked back into some kind of neat do, baring her pale, elegant neck and what he suspected were real pearls at her delicate lobes—it all spoke of someone used to the better things in life.

Merely looking at her made him feel as if he’d soiled her somehow.

His grin widened. Oh, how he wanted to get her even dirtier still.

Laney looked as if she’d forgotten something and quickly got to her feet. She edged around the desk to face him, wiping her palms on her pencil-thin skirt before extending her right hand. “Where are my manners?” she said with a smile. “Hello, Mr. Southard.” She gave his hand a quick shake, but Carter held on to hers a heartbeat longer. “It’s good to see you again,” she said.