Defender Read online

  But that seemed more unlikely by the day. She was living in pipe dreams. Paul was content to have her at arm’s length. He didn’t want her. At least, he didn’t want her the way she wanted him. She cared more for him than she’d ever cared for anyone, except her mother and sister.

  As Paul liked to remind her, though, she hadn’t been out in the world long enough to know what she really wanted. That amused her. He seemed to think she was still the seventeen-year-old he’d taken to school every day in the limo. She was twenty-one, almost twenty-two now. She’d graduate from college in a few months. That made her, in the eyes of the world, an adult. Not to Paul, though. Never to Paul.

  She had to start thinking about what she was going to do with her life after college. Law had always fascinated her. She’d been hanging around the courthouse after school, grilling one of District Attorney Blake Kemp’s assistant DAs about what it was like to practice in a courtroom. Glory Ramirez was happy to talk to her, filling her head with thoughts of working in the DA’s office.

  “Blake knows how much time you spend here, on my lunch hour and after work,” Glory teased.

  “Oh, no,” Sari began.

  Glory held up a hand. “He doesn’t mind. There aren’t that many people blazing paths up the street to the courthouse to solicit work in the DA’s office.” She sobered. “It’s hard work, Sari, with long hours. Sometimes defendants’ families target us, because they think we’ve been unfair. Sometimes the defendants themselves try to attack us when they get out. Those instances are rare, but they do happen. Family life is hard.” She smiled gently. “I’m qualified to know that, because my husband and I have a son who’s almost four years old. Rodrigo still works for the DEA and I’m at the courthouse all hours. Sometimes we have to have the Pendletons babysit.” The Pendletons were Glory’s adoptive family. Jason’s father had been Glory, and Gracie’s, guardian.

  “I don’t really think they mind,” Sari teased, because it was well-known that although Jason and Gracie Pendleton had a son and daughter of their own now, they still loved to watch their nephew. All the kids had enough toys to stock a nursery.

  “Of course not,” Glory laughed. “But I’m still missing out on time with my family to do this job. I love it,” she added gently. “It’s a special thing, to help keep people safe, to make sure people who do terrible things are punished and off the streets. That’s why I do it.”

  “I…would do it for that reason, as well,” Sari said, not adding that her terror of a father was one of her own motivations. He was the sort of person who should have been sitting in a jail cell, but never would, because of his wealth. “Justice shouldn’t be dealt according to who has money and who hasn’t,” she added absently.

  Glory, who had some idea of Darwin Grayling’s illegal dealings, only nodded her head.

  “Anyway, what about those courses you mentioned?” she asked, bringing Glory back to the present.

  Glory laughed. “Okay. Here’s what you need to consider in law school…”

  * * *

  Sari was full of fire for the fall semester in law school, after she got her undergraduate degree. Her cumulative grades assured that she would graduate, the finals from each class notwithstanding. She already had a graduate school picked out. Law school in San Antonio.

  “You’ll have to drive me, of course,” Sari told Paul with a sigh when she outlined the courses Glory had told her about. “There’s no way Daddy will ever let me drive myself. I don’t even have a driver’s license.”

  He scowled. “Surely not.”

  She shrugged. “He holds the purse strings, you know. Either I do it his way or I don’t do it,” she said with the complacency of a woman who’d lived such a sheltered life. “So I do it.”

  “Haven’t you ever wanted to break out?” he asked suddenly.

  She grinned at him across a plate of cookies, which they were sharing with cups of coffee at the small kitchen table. “You offering to help me?” she teased. “Got a helicopter and a couple of guys wearing ninja suits?”

  He chuckled. “Not quite. I used to know a couple of guys like that, though, in the old days.”

  “Oh, please,” she said, munching a cookie. “You aren’t old enough to be remembering ‘the old days.’”

  His eyebrows rose. “You need glasses, kid. I’ve got gray hair already.”

  She eyed him. He was so gorgeous. Black wavy hair, deep-set warm brown eyes, high cheekbones, chiseled mouth; he was any woman’s dream guy. “Gray hair, my left elbow.”

  “No kidding. Right here.” He indicated a spot at his temple.

  “Oh, that one. Sure. You’re old, all right. You’ve got one whole gray hair.”

  He grinned, as she’d expected him to. “Well, maybe a few more than that. I’m like my grandfather. His hair never turned gray. He had a few silver hairs when he died, at the age of eighty.”

  “Do you look like him?” she asked, sipping coffee.

  “No. I look like my grandmother. Everybody else was Italian. She was tiny and Greek and she had a mouth like a mob boss.” He chuckled. “Do something wrong, and that gnarled little hand came out of nowhere to grab your ear.” He made a face.

  “So that’s why your ears are so big,” she mused, looking at them.

  “Hey, I was never that bad,” he argued. He glowered at her. “And my ears aren’t that big.”

  “If you say so,” she said, hiding the gleam in her eyes.

  “You little termagant,” he said, exasperated.

  “Where do you get all those big words?” she asked.

  “College.”

  “Really? You never told me you went to college.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t like talking about the past.”

  “I noticed.”

  “We could talk about your past,” he invited.

  “And after those forty-five seconds, we could go back to yours,” she teased, blue eyes twinkling. “Come on, what did you study?”

  “Law.” His face hardened with the memories. “Criminal law.”

  She frowned. “That was before you came to work for Daddy, yes?”

  She was killing him and she didn’t know it. His hand, on the thick white mug, was almost white with the pressure he was exerting. “A long time before that.”

  “Then, what…”

  Mandy came into the room like a chubby whirlwind. “Where did you put the ribbons I was saving to wrap the holiday cookies with?” she demanded from Sari.

  “Oh, my gosh, I was working on homemade Christmas cards and I borrowed them. I’m sorry!”

  “Go get them,” Mandy ordered with all the authority of a drill sergeant. “Right now!”

  Sari left in a whirlwind, and Mandy turned to Paul, who was paler than normal. His hand, around the mug, was just beginning to loosen its grip.

  He gave her a suspicious look.

  “Sari doesn’t think,” Mandy said quietly. “She’s curious and she asks questions, because she doesn’t think.”

  He didn’t admit anything. He took a deep breath. “Thanks,” he bit off.

  “We all have dark memories that we never share, Mr. Paul,” she said gently. She patted his shoulder as she walked behind him. “Age diminishes the sting a bit. But you’re much too young for that just yet,” she added with a soft chuckle.

  “You’re a tonic, girl.”

  “I haven’t been a girl for forty years, you sweet man, but now I feel like one!”

  He laughed, the pain washing away in good humor.

  “There. That’s better,” she said, smiling at him. “You just keep putting one foot in front of the other, and it gets easier.”

  “It’s been almost five years.”

  “Thirty years for me,” Mandy said surprisingly. “And it’s much easier now.”


  He drew in a breath and finished his coffee. “Maybe in twenty-five years, I’ll forget it all, then.”

  She looked at him with a somber little smile. “It would do an injustice to the people we love to forget them,” she said softly. “Pain comes with the memories, sure. But the memories become less painful in time.”

  He scowled. “You should have been a philosopher.”

  “And then who’d bake cookies for you and Miss Sari and Miss Merrie?” she asked.

  “Well, if we had to depend on Isabel’s cooking, I expect we’d all starve,” he said deliberately when he heard Sari coming.

  She stopped in the doorway, gasping and glaring. “That is so unfair!” she exclaimed. “Heavens, I made an almost-edible, barely scorched potato casserole just last week!”

  “That’s true,” Mandy agreed.

  Paul glowered. “Almost being the operative word.”

  “And I didn’t even mention that I saw you pushing yours out the back door while I was trying to pry open one of my biscuits so I could butter it!”

  Sari sighed. “I guess they were a pretty good substitute for bricks,” she added. “Maybe I’ll learn to cook one day.”

  “You’re doing just fine, darlin’,” Mandy said encouragingly. “It takes time to learn.” She shot Paul a glance. “And a lot of encouragement.”

  “Damn, Isabel, I almost got one of those biscuits pried open to put butter in!” He glanced at Mandy. “How’s that?”

  “Why don’t you go patrol the backyard?” Sari muttered.

  “She’s picking on me again, Mandy,” he complained.

  “Don’t you be mean to Mr. Paul, young lady.” Mandy took his part at once.

  “He says terrible things about me, and you never chastise him!” Sari accused.

  “Well, darlin’, I may be old, but I can still appreciate a handsome man.” She grinned at them.

  Sari threw up her hands. Paul made her a handsome bow, winked and walked out the back door.

  “You always take his side,” Sari groaned.

  Mandy chuckled. “He really is handsome,” she said defensively.

  “Yes. Too handsome. And too standoffish. He’ll never look at me as anything but the kid I was when he came here.”

  “You’ve got law school to get through,” Mandy reminded her. She sobered. “And you know how your dad feels about you getting involved with anyone.”

  “Yes, I know,” Sari said miserably. “Especially anybody who works for him.” Shivering softly, she said, “It’s just, I’m getting older. I’m a grown woman. And I can’t even drive myself to San Antonio to go shopping or invite friends over.”

  “You don’t have any friends,” Mandy countered.

  “I don’t dare. Neither does Merrie,” she added solemnly. “We’re young, with the whole world out there waiting for us, and we have to get permission to leave the house. Why?” she exclaimed.

  Mandy ground her teeth. “You know how your dad guards his privacy. He’s afraid one of you might let something slip.”

  “Like what? We don’t know anything about his business, or even his private life,” Sari exclaimed.

  “And you’re both safe as long as it’s kept that way,” Mandy said without thinking, then slapped a hand across her mouth.

  Sari bit her lower lip. She moved closer. “What do you know?”

  “Things I’ll die before I’ll tell you,” the older woman replied, turning pale.

  “How do you know them?”

  Mandy ignored her.

  “Your brother, right?” she whispered. “He knows people who know things.”

  “Don’t you ever say that out loud,” she cautioned the younger woman, looking hunted until Sari reassured her that she’d never do any such thing.

  “It’s like living in a combat zone,” Sari muttered.

  “A satin-cushioned one,” came the droll reply. “If you want an apple pie, here’s a do-it-yourself kit.” She put a basin of apples in front of the younger woman. “So get busy and peel.”

  Sari started to argue. But then she recalled the delicious pies Mandy could make, so she shut up and started peeling.

  * * *

  Graduation came all too soon. The household, except for Darwin Grayling, who was in Europe at the time, went to Merrie’s first at the high school and took enough pictures to fill an album. Then, only a few days later, it was Isabel’s graduation from college. Merrie kept fussing with Sari’s high collar.

  “It’s okay,” her older sibling protested.

  “It’s not! There’s a wrinkle, and I can’t get it smoothed out!” Merrie grumbled.

  “It will be hidden under my robes,” Sari said gently, turning. She smiled at her younger sister. She shook her head. With her long blond hair like a curtain down her back, wearing a fluffy blue dress, Merrie looked like a picture of Alice in Wonderland that Sari had seen in a book. “I like your hair like that,” she said.

  Merrie laughed, her pale blue eyes lighting up. “I look like Alice. Go ahead. Say it. You’re thinking it,” she accused.

  Sari wrinkled her nose.

  Merrie sighed. “He decides what we’ll wear, where we’ll go, what we do when we get there,” she said under her breath, her eyes on their father, standing with Paul near the front door. “Sari, normal women don’t live like this! The girls I go to school with have dates, go shopping…!”

  “Stop, or I won’t get to graduate at all,” the older sister muttered under her breath when Darwin Grayling shot an irritated glance toward them at Merrie’s slightly raised tone.

  Merrie drew in a deep breath. “It’s Sari’s collar,” she called to her father. “I can’t get the wrinkle out!”

  “Leave it be,” he shot back. He looked at his watch. “We need to leave now. I have meetings with my board of directors in Dallas in three hours.”

  “That’s your graduation, sandwiched in between breakfast and a board meeting,” Merrie teased under her breath. “At least he came home for your graduation,” she added a little bitterly.

  Sari kissed her sister’s cheek. “I was there at yours. So were Mandy and Paul. Now shut up or I’ll never graduate,” came the whispered reply. “Let’s go!” She smoothed down her very discreet black dress, regardless of her own wishes, and started toward the door. She noticed Paul’s faint wince as he saw how she was dressed, like someone out of a very old Bette Davis movie instead of a young woman ready to start graduate school.

  She didn’t answer that look. It might have been fatal to his employment if she had.

  Graduation was boisterous and fun, despite her father, who sat through the entire ceremony texting on his phone and then conducting a business call the minute the graduates filed out into the spring sunshine.

  “Maybe it’s glued to him,” Merrie teased as she and Sari were briefly alone.

  “Attached by invisible cords,” Sari replied. “Hi, Grace, happy graduation!” Sari called to a fellow graduate.

  “Thanks, Sari! You off to law school in the fall?” she asked.

  “Yes. You?”

  “I’m moving in with my boyfriend,” Grace sighed, indicating a tall, gangly boy talking to another boy. “We’re both going to the University of Tennessee.”

  “Oh, I see,” Sari said, still not comfortable with modern ideas and choices.

  Grace made a face. “Honestly, Sari, you need to buy normal clothes and go out with boys,” Grace said, loud enough for Sari’s father to hear.

  He hung up his phone and moved to join them, looking expensive and coldly angry. “Are you ready to go, Isabel?” he asked curtly. His eyes never left Grace. He looked at her as if she were some disease he was afraid his daughters might catch.

  “Uh, congrats, Sari. See you around,” Grace said, red-faced, and went back to h
er boyfriend.

  “Slut,” Darwin said, just loud enough for his voice to carry and Grace to look both ruffled and insulted. “Let’s go.” He took Sari by the arm and almost dragged her to the waiting limousine, with a flustered Merrie running to catch up.

  “I’ll have Paul watching,” Darwin said as Paul put the girls into the back of the limo and stood aside, holding the door, so that Darwin could slide into the seat facing them. The door closed. “I’ll expect you to associate with decent girls. Do you understand? That goes for you, too, Meredith!”

  “Yes, Daddy,” Sari said.

  “I understand,” Merrie added with a sigh.

  The sisters didn’t dare look at each other. It would have been fatal.

  * * *

  The dinner Darwin had referred to was obviously going to be prepared by Mandy and just for the two women. Darwin had Paul drive him to the airport, where his corporate jet was waiting. Sari and Merrie sat down to a lovely chicken casserole with homemade rolls and even a chocolate cake.

  “It’s delicious, Mandy,” Sari said halfway through the meal. “Thanks!”

  “Yes, it’s wonderful!” Merrie enthused.

  “Some graduation,” Mandy muttered. “Should have gone out with your classmates and had fun, not be stuck here with me and an empty house.”

  “You know how Daddy is,” Sari said quietly. “He doesn’t think…”

  “He doesn’t care,” Merrie interrupted coolly. “It’s the truth, Sari, you just don’t want to admit it. He doesn’t want us going out with men because we might get involved and tell somebody something he doesn’t want known. He doesn’t want us getting married because we’d be out from under his thumb! Besides, some of that money might go outside the family!”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Sari said, tasting her cake. “It’s just, you get used to a routine. You don’t even realize that it really is a routine.” Her eyes twinkled. “Honestly, I thought Daddy was going to have a coronary when Grace talked about moving in with her boyfriend!”

  Merrie chuckled. “I know! At least four of my classmates live with boys. They say it’s very exciting…”