Anybody handling divorce work needed to acquaint themselves with the traditional phases of grieving: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Clients ricocheted through them, sometimes touching four out of five in the space of ten minutes.
The fifth phase…acceptance. That one was elusive. Dunstan sensed the Almquists might never attain it.
“Don’t look out the window,” Jane DeLuca said, stuffing her undersized computer into her oversized carpetbag. “Our clients are not at their best.”
“One doesn’t expect them to be,” Dunstan said, passing over copies of the first-round parenting schedule. He, of course, took a gander out the window so he could surreptitiously open it another three inches and begin detoxing the baby powder nerve gas from the room. “Oh, for God’s sake.”
“I warned you,” Jane said, coming to stand beside him. “Pathetic, but predictable. I’ve tried to nudge Cal into counseling, but he’s the white knuckle divorce type, apparently.”
Under the old oak, dead leaves drifting around them, rain mizzling down, Calvin held Doreen and stroked her hair. Mrs. Almquist was clearly in tears, and Calvin…
“Your client is pretty broken up about this divorce,” Dunstan said, knowing he should look away, but enjoying a moment with opposing counsel standing next to him, despite the sad tableau under the oak and the tickle in his sinuses. “Hit him by surprise.”
And that wasn’t what Dunstan had expected. Embezzlers were a canny lot, usually. The cheeriest people you’d ever want to meet, all the while sliding a hand into your pocket.
“They seem like a good team,” Jane said. “I get that violent relationships need to end, but for people like these, I can’t fathom what is so awful, what is so damned, unbearably miserable, that signing up for Match.com looks good in comparison to what you’ve spent years building with your children’s other parent.”
“One of life’s great mysteries. My Uncle Donald says if birds can mate for life, great apes ought to be able to pull it off.”
“What does your aunt say?”
“Uncle isna married.” Though he had close and abiding relationships with his pocket flask and his weaponry.
“Dunstan, may I ask you something?”
And here it came, the sticky, tricky question, about foregoing court-ordered discovery on the financial documents, or about sending the clients for financial mediation, where such informality was often the norm.
“Aye, but let’s move away from the window.”
For the Almquists were having a good, long, miserable cuddle amid the dead leaves and autumn mist.
“I don’t begrudge them a moment to console each other,” Jane said, stuffing the schedule into the depths of her carpetbag. “But too much of that, and they’ll turn their gun sights on us.”
Because whatever animosity the divorce engendered often did end up being aimed at the lawyers, giving parties desperate for common ground targets they could both fire at.
“They’ll get around to playing get-the-lawyers eventually anyhow,” Dunstan said, closing the curtain over the window. Which was a…mistake. The day was dreary, and closing the curtains cast the small conference room into a cozy gloom, like a confessional. “If you’re about to ask about waiving formal discovery, I haven’t discussed the notion with my client.”
Nor would he. Waiving formal discovery, where the court oversaw the fact-finding phase of the case, was ill-advised.
“Discovery shouldn’t be a problem,” Jane said, zipping her carpetbag closed. “I get the sense your client has control of all the household accounts and bills, so most of the documentation should come from her.”
“You’re shorter today. Shorter than usual.” He liked that, though he also liked how she prowled around in her spiky heels, a family law superheroine in pursuit of any villains bent on world domination.
“I’m short every day.” She plucked Dunstan’s glasses from his nose and handed them to him. “Are these for show, or do you really need them? Glasses make a great courtroom prop. I wore flats because it’s raining, or sleeting, or something.”
She scooted onto the conference table and kicked out a foot with a slipper-looking black shoe on it.
Dunstan busied himself tidying papers into no particular order rather than examine her feet. He’d touched her ankle bones, found them slim and sharp, her calf sturdy, and—
He needed to get out more, and not to the Knightley brothers’ poker nights. “Sensible of you, I’m sure, to forego the heels. When do you expect to file your motions for discovery?”
“In the library the other day, and at the restaurant, did you touch my—touch me on purpose?”
The question was oh-so-casual and completely unexpected, as the best cross-examination could be. A world of possibilities lay in that question, most of them bad.
“If I say yes, you’ll have me up before the bar association for sexual harassment, sent off to naughty-lawyer classes and begging to keep my license, or at the very least, you’ll move to kick me off this case.”
She might also charge him with assault for the hell of it, assault being any harmful or offensive touching. The state’s attorney was a right bastard who’d delight in handling the case too.
No sense of humor at the prosecutor’s office, though the first time, in the library, Dunstan hadn’t entirely intended to take liberties.
And Dunstan hadn’t earned nearly enough of the Almquist retainer. Then too, if Jane knew her client’s hands were financially dirty, forcing Mrs. Almquist to change lawyers would obscure that difficult reality nicely.
A wonderful legal analysis of the facts, far too late to do him any good.
“James Knightley claims you meet some very nice people in naughty-lawyer classes,” Jane said, scooting off the conference table. “Not that he’s attended.”
James Knightley was damned good-looking, also shrewd. He was the local expert on corporate law, which meant he could—and did—date the entire rest of the
Damson County Women’s Bar Association with little chance of a conflict of interest.
“Let me ask you a question, then, Counselor,” Dunstan said. He unhooked Jane’s raincoat from the rack and held it open for her. “Was your wee foot trying to evade my hand? On either occasion?”
Because another hypothesis could explain why she’d bring this up now:
Jane DeLuca, spikey-heeled terror of the Damson County family law bar, needed to get out more too.
* * *
Dunstan Cromarty had the knack of holding a lady’s coat so she didn’t have to contort herself into it, but could instead stand more or less passively while her outerwear was slipped up her arms and draped over her shoulders.
The sensation was…lovely and novel, and that Jane allowed this courtesy probably answered any questions about her wee fute and whether she’d complain to the bar association about a moment or two of slap and tickle.
“Dunstan, where’s your staff?” Jane asked, because she and opposing counsel were apparently to have a somewhat awkward conversation about boundaries and professionalism.
About which her feet were not happy at all.
“My staff is larking about Lancaster County on some quilt tour. They asked for the day off weeks ago, and I usually manage well enough without them. My paralegal’s only half time, and my secretary leaves at three thirty to pick up her kids.”
Knowing he was a good boss did nothing to help Jane maintain a professional distance. “Why aren’t you in Scotland, Cromarty?”
“I often think of going home, but I won’t do that until my coffers will allow a successful transition to practice there. When you’re a solo practitioner, and all the overhead falls to you, you make little financial headway.”
He said this standing behind Jane, as if he didn’t want her to see him admit homesickness, or the weariness that came with being a solo practitioner.
“Tell me about it,” Jane said, stepping away. She cracked the curtain over the window and saw the Almquists giving each other a final hug beside a blue SUV, Cal’s briefcase at his feet, his hand braced near his wife’s shoulder.
“Jane, about your question?”
She could tell by his tone that the awkward discussion would be blessedly brief. He’d meant nothing, he hadn’t been flirting, it wouldn’t happen again. No harm, no foul.
No more lunches without cutlery, no more speculating about what Dunstan Cromarty looked like wearing only his glasses.
“You have very pretty feet,” he said, which was an interesting opening statement, but whatever else he might have said was lost in a great sneeze that he silenced by pinching his nose closed.
“Didn’t your mother tell you not to do that?” Jane asked, shouldering her carpetbag. “You’re supposed to let a sneeze out, not trap it, because it can do all kinds of—Dunstan? Cromarty?”
He stood bent forward a few peculiar inches at the waist, one hand braced on the conference table. His expression had a listening quality, like a juvenile delinquent who’d just knocked back a fifth of Jim Beam might listen for the approach of sirens—or death.
Jane set her bag on the table. “Dunstan, is something wrong? You’ve gone pale.”
Even his lips were pale, and his eyes suggested his innocent client had just been given twenty to life.
“Are you having a heart attack?”
He eased out a breath. “Nay. Not a heart attack. It’s m’ back.” He commenced to swearing softly, carefully, such as a man does when even breathing too deeply promises crippling pain.
Jane caught a few “fookin’s,” a “shite,” and some other words that were too heavily accented for her to make out.
“Do we need to get you to urgent care?”
Because she was alone with him—drat and damn all quilt tours—and she couldn’t leave him like this. Fortunately, she had neither court nor client appointments for the rest of the day, though she had work aplenty.
“I’ll be fine. Some heat, some rest, a wee dram or two, and I’ll come right. I always have before. You can run along now.”
He hadn’t moved, hadn’t shifted his posture a single millimeter.
“Run along? And leave you the oil can? You won’t be that lucky. I let you pay for lunch, you’ll let me drive you home.”
He wanted to argue. Jane could see the words fighting to get past his white lips, could see pride and pragmatism having a badass rumble, with common sense holding all bets.
“I’ll get your briefcase,” she said. “What else do you need?”
“I’ll be—”
“You’ll be laid up for a couple days, but if you tell me which files to grab, you can at least stare at them until the wee drams work their magic. If you argue with me on this, I’ll tickle you.”
“Shameless tactics,” he muttered, as he began a slow, shuffling, half-bent progress toward the door. “The Almquist file will do. Throw in the Fosters’ agreement too—that one’s on my desk. Grab Baxter while you’re about it, and maybe Ostergard, as well.”
“You’re taking a couple days at home, Dunstan, not setting up a home office. Where are your keys?”
Progress to the parking lot was slow and silent, with Jane carrying both her carpetbag and Dunstan’s battered briefcase.
“I’ll not be able to get out of that,” Dunstan said as they approached Jane’s powder-blue Prius. “And gettin’ in won’t be a treat, either.”
While she sympathized with his misery, Jane had rather enjoyed his bad language. “What do you propose?”
“My vehicle will do.”
His vehicle. The small parking lot held three other cars, all with a dusting of wet, yellow oak leaves and the occasional oversized snowflake. “The Camry?”
“The Tundra.”
A Tundra was a…truck. A big, muddy black truck with the tailgate down and testosterone tires such as Jane could have neither lifted nor afforded. “You can get into that thing?”
“I’ll haul myself up by the handles. You’ll have to drive.”
First, she had to wait as Dunstan by groans and inches shifted himself up into the passenger’s seat. He settled back slowly, slowly, never seeming to reach a place of comfort. Jane slammed his door closed and came around to the driver’s side.
Getting in was undignified, and the seat was way too far back, but the view was lovely.
“I’ve always wanted to drive a truck,” she said, fitting the key into the ignition and cranking the engine. “I like sitting up this high, and these seats are cushy. Is this the seat heater?”
She hit two buttons, cranking his up to high and putting her own at medium. Everything on the dash was fairly self-explanatory, and the truck steered beautifully.
So it was completely by accident that Jane bumped a rear wheel over a curb pulling out, causing Dunstan to curse for nearly half a block in a language she didn’t recognize.
* * *
Please, Almighty Merciful God, do not let Wallace be playing turd hockey on the kitchen floor when I hobble in the door with Jane DeLuca at my side.
“You haven’t passed out on me, have you?” Jane asked as she shut the truck off. “Your eyes are closed.”
“I’m gathering my strength.” For any number of ordeals.
“Don’t you move until I’ve rappelled down the cliff side,” she said, scrambling out of the driver’s seat.
She was so little, she had to more or less jump out of the truck, while Dunstan… He moved one leg, then the other. He paused to let the agony bounce around in his body, then used the handles to haul himself sideways, and so it went, one indignity, one torment at a time.
Jane shouldered their various bags, while Dunstan caught sight of Wallace sitting in the living room window, a marmalade ball of gloating feline.
“Oh, you have a kitty! What’s his name?”
“Fat Bastard. The door’s nae locked.”
She opened the door and stood back so Dunstan could totter past her, then she hauled their bags in and closed the door. “Is an unlocked door prudent? You’re fairly isolated here.”
“I’m hoping somebody will come by and steal the cat.” Who, in an unprecedented display of survival instinct, had neither recently used the litter box, nor undertaken any hockey games that Dunstan could see.
It being a hallmark of Wallace’s hockey seasons that cat litter was sprinkled from one end of the downstairs to the other.
“I love these old farm houses,” Jane said, shrugging out of her coat. “They have charm.”
Dunstan stretched out a casual hand and braced himself against the nearest wall, a compromise between his tattered dignity and the urge to crumple in a screaming fetal heap three steps inside the door.
“These old farm houses have heating bills. If you’d like to take my truck back to town, I can have one of the Knightleys give me a lift tomorrow.”
He didn’t attempt a smile, neither did he try to get to the sofa, a good five yards, three cursing fits, and four prayers off across the living room. Carpeted yards, though, which would make crawling ever so much more comfy.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Jane said, and damn the woman, she spoke with the patient amusement of a small female with a perfectly functional sacroiliac. “The first order of business should be to get you into a hot shower, if your bad back is anything like my grandpa’s. Is your bedroom upstairs?”
“I’ll be adorning the sofa for a wee bit before attempting anything so ambitious as a shower.” Though a shower…His muscles stopped pounding on his tailbone long enough to beg for that hot shower even before he opened his last bottle of twenty-five-year-old Glenmorangie single malt.
“So you can’t make it up the stairs. Does this level have a bathroom?”
He didn’t like this line of questioning one bit. “Aye.”
“Then what are you waiting for?”
Disaster for Scotland, to put the situation mildly. “I’m waiting for the floor to open up and swallow me whole. I’ll not allow you to undress me, Jane DeLuca.”
Not like this, please God. Not like this.
“So we’ll put you in the shower with your clothes on. Would you leave me to suffer when my back hurt so badly I couldn’t stand the thought of sneezing again?”
He crossed himself with the hand that wasn’t anchored to the wall. “You’re a cruel woman to mention such a thing. There’ll be no sneezing of any kind for the foreseeable future.”
And not to put too fine a point on it, his diet would be rich in fiber, once he could stand in the kitchen long enough to pour milk on cereal. Wallace chose then to strop himself across Dunstan’s legs.
“He knows I canna kick him.”
Jane inserted herself under Dunstan’s outstretched arm, which was about three seconds away from shaking. “Lean on me. Anybody who names a cat Fat Bastard has already abused the animal. I assume the facilities are down the hall?”
Miles away, of course. Why didn’t old farm houses have bathrooms in the foyer?
“Second door on the left.”
He tried not to lean on her—and failed. Jane was surprisingly sturdy, though, and they covered the distance to the bathroom with only a bit more swearing. Then she abandoned him—abandoned him—with an admonition to get off as much of his clothing as he could while she retrieved sweats from his bedroom upstairs.
Sometimes, when his back went out, within twenty minutes, he could tell he was due for only a light penance. A dose of painkiller, time lying prone, a movie or two, and all could be forgiven, provided he took no chances for several days.
This was shaping up to be a less accommodating episode.
Dunstan undressed in the bathroom, his clothes piled into a heap at his feet, for he could not bend down to hang them up and couldn’t balance on one foot long enough to hook them with his toes—he knew all the tricks. He could manage to brush his teeth and tend to other standing rituals, and by the time he heard a tap on the door, he was sporting only a towel about his hips.
“It’s nae locked.”
“Good,” Jane said, pushing the door closed behind her. “I found sweats, but wouldn’t a kilt be easier? You don’t have to step into it.”
She brandished a black work kilt Dunstan wore when waging his endless war with the yard.
“That’s a fetching ensemble you’re wearing yourself, Ms. DeLuca.” For she’d changed into gray sweats and a green T-shirt that said If it takes three years to get there, it had better be one helluva bar.
“I always have gym clothes with me,” she said, turning on the bathtub taps and holding her hand under the gushing stream.
Maybe she frequently found herself sleeping in places other than her own bed? Not a cheering thought.
She fiddled with the taps, and soon, water streamed from the shower head in steamy abundance. The difficulty before Dunstan daunted him: He had to raise each foot high enough to step into the shower and shift his weight without falling.
“In you go,” Jane said, showing no indication of absenting herself. “If you think I’ll let you risk a slip-and-fall now, you’re dumber than I thought.” She stepped closer and put her arms around Dunstan’s bare torso. “Lean on me, and no heroic measures, because I’ll probably topple with you, and I will sue you if I injure anything other than my pride.”
He leaned, he tottered, he leaned some more, and finally, finally, found his way to the soothing, hot spray. Jane whisked his towel off and flipped the Royal Stewart plaid shower curtain closed in the same nanosecond, but the bliss of the hot water was so great, Dunstan almost didn’t care what she saw, or what she thought of what she saw.
Almost.
* * *
Jane hadn’t looked, truly she hadn’t, but she’d seen anyway.
She paused outside the bathroom door, back braced against the wall as images of a naked Dunstan Cromarty danced through her head—and a few points south.
A long, tapered back that flowed into a taut, male tush; defined musculature on every limb; the proverbial washboard abs; and a chest that really deserved to be immortalized on the covers of a few romance novels.
And as for the rest…
She contemplated the rest of him, at length, as it were, until the shower stopped. In the ensuing silence, reason rescued Jane from considering career suicide: Dunstan Cromarty wasn’t interested in her. That’s what his pretty fute speech would have been about, had he been allowed to finish it.
“Do not even think of getting out of that shower, Dunstan Cromarty,” Jane called, as she opened the bathroom door. Fragrant steam beclouded her senses, along with the knowledge that a big, wet, hurting Scot stood on the other side of the shower curtain.
“Pass me the towel, Jane, or I’ll scandalize us both.”
Let the scandalizing begin. “This one’s dry.” She slid a fluffy red bath towel around the end of the shower curtain. “Towel off as best you can, and then I’ll pass you the kilt.”
He didn’t manscape. He probably didn’t even know what manscaping was, and Jane hoped he never learned.
“I’ll have that kilt now.”
The damp towel was thrust forth. Jane made the swap. “Do you feel any better?”
“Aye, a bit. I’ll break out the heating pad, take a few pills, and settle in for the rest of the day. This will pass.”
Jane leaned against the wall, trying not to picture Dunstan Cromarty fastening on a kilt. “Do you have court tomorrow?”
“Nay, thank Christ. I wouldna answer for the consequences if I had to listen to Elvin Gregory’s bleating when my back’s troubling me. No court until next week. You?”
“Same. Shall we get you out of there?”
The shower curtain whipped back, revealing a damp Dunstan Cromarty wearing nothing but a pleated black kilt and a scowl. “I can manage.”
“I can help.” He hated this, hated being seen helpless, and Jane could understand that. “My Aunt Della fell in the shower and busted a hip. She lay there for more than a day before my cousin found her.”
A heavy arm settled across Jane’s shoulders. “You’re such a ray of sunshine, wee Jane. How have I functioned without you in my bathroom all these years? In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not your auld auntie.”
“One foot at a time,” Jane said, tucking an arm around his waist.
He moved somewhat more easily, so Jane let him find his way to the couch on his own and tidied up in the bathroom. She left the door open to let the steam out, tossed the dirties and the used towels in a closet washing machine and started the load.
“Where’s the heating pad?”
“In the linen closet upstairs, but you mustn’t let the cat see you plugging it in.”
“I noticed cat food in a plastic container labeled ‘Wallace.’ Do you have more than one cat?”
Dunstan eased back on the sofa cushions, and carefully, carefully, stretched out full length. “His proper name is Fat Bastard Wallace Cromarty. The whiskey’s above the cat food in the pantry. Perhaps you’ll share a dram with me?”
The Scots were reputed to be a hospitable lot, unless they were planning murder or treason—much like the Italians. Jane went off in search of hooch and a heating pad.
Dunstan’s house was tidy, even his king-size bed was made—cozy Black Watch plaid flannel sheets and wool blankets—and his personal bathroom was spotless. Sheets and towels in the linen closet were neatly folded and stacked, lavender soaps and sachets tucked between them.
And yet, two spare rooms down the hall from his bedroom were empty. Not sparsely furnished, but echoingly empty. No curtains, no stacked boxes.
The pantry shelves presented the same picture: What stores Dunstan had—healthy cereal, canned soup (low salt, not low fat), tea, coffee, a bag of gourmet bite-size dark chocolates—were arranged for easy access, but more than half the shelves were empty.
And only one box of pasta, one can of tomato sauce, one can of chili beans, though again, the quality was good.
“Why do you stock your larder like an old person?” Jane asked as she plugged in the heating pad.
“Now you’ve done it. Wallace and that heating pad have an unnatural relationship.”
The heating pad’s flannel sleeve was Black Watch plaid. Wallace hopped down from the upright piano and positioned himself sphinx-like on the arm of the sofa.
“He heard you summon him,” Jane said, though the cat’s dimensions suggested an open can of fancy white albacore was the only summons he truly heeded. “Scoot a bit.”
Dunstan snatched the heating pad from her rather than allow her to tuck it behind him. “I’ll do it.”
He positioned it low against his back—very low.
“You have two empty rooms upstairs,” Jane said. “Is that Scottish frugality, or a sign of impending departure for the Auld Sod?”
Because somewhere in the Lonely Woman’s Handbook of Heartbreak, it was written that just as that woman finally found a man who might— might—interest her, he had to ship out for his next assignment, transfer to the home office, or otherwise become geographically compromised.
Though Jane was not interested in Dunstan Cromarty, Esquire. Could not be interested in him.
He closed his eyes, and rather than stand over him, Jane took a seat on the carpeted floor, which created a curious, eye-level intimacy.
“I’ll go home, eventually,” he said. “My mother claims she lives for the day, though she’s little ones aplenty and all three of my siblings to console her. I’m in practice by myself. All the revenue is mine and all the bills too. You know what that’s like.”
He had done a better job than Jane had at creating a home. His piano had pictures of people on it; family, judging from the number of big, smiling men in kilts. The mantel over the woodstove held framed awards and more pictures, one of them a panoramic photograph of some gray stone castle by a beautiful, still lake.
“Take these,” Jane said, passing him two pills. “I found them upstairs. I’m guessing you bought them in the UK, because they have codeine in them and they’re not prescription.”
“That I did.” He downed the pills. “I forgot I had them in my luggage, which doesn’t say much for the constabulary in Customs.”
A sip of water came next, a tricky undertaking when supine. Jane resisted the urge to support Dunstan’s head and took the glass back when he’d finished.
“I’ve been in Damson County for five years,” she said, stroking a hand over Wallace’s thick fur, “and I still have boxes of stuff I moved up here from DC. I’ve thought about switching apartments after the first of the year, but then I’d be committing the mortal sin of moving the same boxes twice.”
Dunstan turned his head to offer her a small, conspiratorial smile.
“My boxes are in the garage. I should be in practice with a partner, of course. When I set up shop, I was the new fellow, and I talked funny. Still do, but a partner reduces the risks. You have a partner.”
“Not any more. Louise chucked all the glamour and glory of small town legal practice for art school and a certain art professor. Now I have an office big enough for two lawyers and nobody to gripe about it to.”
“Gripe to me. I’m a captive audience, and I’m developing an unnatural relationship with the couch and the heating pad both. Wallace has set me a bad example, you see. You, fortunately, are putting my cat to sleep, or he’d be tormenting me in my helpless and vulnerable state.”
For all his grousing about the cat, Dunstan was less uncomfortable. Jane deduced this from his eyes, from his color, from the way he relaxed into the sofa cushions. And Wallace wasn’t going to sleep. He wouldn’t when he was on duty as a guardian kitty of Clan Cromarty’s Maryland branch.
“I miss Louise.” Jane scratched Wallace’s white bib of a chin rather than admit she hadn’t meant to say that. “She would come slamming back from court, ranting about Judge Mansfield’s bias against people named Horatio, or the prosecutor’s inability to organize a docket, and I could come back with lazy opposing counsel and cheating spouses.”
“I hate it when they cheat, though I don’t blame them. Loneliness is the most dangerous and sincere precursor to stupidity.”
He stuffed a pillow under his head, making the muscles of his chest flex, and Jane endured a bolt of sincerity passing right down her middle.
“I can’t blame the ones who cheat,” Jane said, “but if you’ll cheat on your spouse, you’ll cheat on your cheat. What sort of foundation is that to move forward on?”
They fell silent while Wallace set up a stentorian purring, co-counsel in agreement with any discussion that kept people close enough to pet him. The cat’s expression was knowing and smug, even for a very large, well loved cat.
Insight popped into Jane’s mind like Gopher popping up in the middle of the night to visit One Stuck Bear.
Doreen Almquist was cheating.
All of that polish and shine, the time at the gym, the designer wardrobe, the perfect hair, wasn’t for the husband she never saw. It was to impress the personal trainer, the sugar daddy—
The guy who bought her all of that jewelry and the fancy perfume.
“You look angry, wee Jane. Is it time for you to leave? Wallace might appreciate a bit of tucker in his dish before you go.”
He wouldn’t ask for himself, but he’d ask for a cat large enough to have its own gravitational field.
“Family law can be such a trial.”
“Put that on a T-shirt, why don’t you? Every family law practitioner on the planet would buy it in three different colors.”
“I’m abandoning you,” Jane said, rising. “Wallace, keep an eye on the patient. I’ll be in the kitchen addressing the sore lack of decent victuals on these premises. Dunstan, do you need anything? Once I start cooking, I’m hard to interrupt.”
“My files.”
“Hopeless,” Jane said, though if he could focus on work, then his back was doing better.
Which meant cooking was simply an excuse to stay here, in the half-empty home of a guy Jane could ethically share a professional friendship with—but no more.
* * *
Wallace at least waited until Jane had disappeared into the kitchen to march across Dunstan’s chest and settle on his belly.
“She likes you,” Dunstan said. Then more quietly, “I like her.”
He reached—carefully—for the Almquist file, then set it aside in favor of the Baxter guardianship, a more or less uncontested matter. Wallace had positioned himself so Dunstan could hold a file too close to read easily or too far away.
“Damned cat.”
The Baxter order was well drafted—Trenton Knightley knew what he was about—and the Ostergard pleadings were ready to submit.
Outside, the wind had picked up, and if Dunstan hadn’t been nursing his back, he would have loaded up the woodstove. Instead, he pulled the tartan blanket off the back of the couch, suffering Wallace’s back claws to his belly for his trouble, only to have the cat re-establish residency when Dunstan had twitched and tugged the blanket into place.
The painkillers were taking effect, subduing the ache in Dunstan’s back, while an ache of a different sort rose up in its place.
He subdued that ache with his notes from the Almquists’ meeting.
“Something tasty this way comes,” Dunstan informed the cat some time later. “Though I don’t know what Jane found to cook up. If you were any sort of friend, you’d go on reconnaissance instead of using me for your personal chafing dish.”
Jane emerged from the kitchen, a wooden spoon in her hand. “Are you on the phone?”
“Arguing with my cat,” Dunstan said, feeling foolish. She’d called his pantry elderly, and old people also talked to their cats. “And winning.”
“Ha. Try this.” She knelt and held the spoon up to Dunstan’s mouth. He took a nibble of tomato, oregano, a hint of cilantro, heat, cumin…
“Does it need something? I like a little heat, a little spice, a hint of sweetness…bold, but not pushy.” She tasted from the same spoon Dunstan had, and innuendo blended with the spices, at least in Dunstan’s male mind. An image of Jane wearing nothing but her spike heels and a smile—heat, spice, sweetness, and boldness—assaulted him.
“Go for bold,” Dunstan said. “The sauce has to stand up to the meat.”
“Right. Bold is good. Do you need your glasses?”
He needed a cold shower, which might do permanent damage to his back.
“Aye. Yonder paperweight means I can’t view anything from a proper distance.” In more ways than one.
“You, come with me.” Jane scooped the cat from Dunstan’s lap, her hand brushing low across his belly through the blankets. “Leave your buddy in peace so he can deal with his lawyer guilt.”
Wallace turned his best take-me-to-your-tuna-fish stare on Jane, while Dunstan put the Ostergard file on his lap. “He’s not allowed on the counter.”
“Oh, right. All day when you’re gone, he sits around staring heavenward, reciting the commandment about not hopping up on spotless counters. He has you so trained.”
They disappeared into the kitchen, Jane muttering about stubborn males, Wallace doing his impersonation of a besotted rag doll.
While Dunstan stared at a file that, even with his glasses on, in his present condition, he had little chance of reading.