Free Some Came Desperate: A Love Saga by Katherine Cachitorie Page B

don’t allow any of my attorneys to take on unwinnable cases, I don’t care how noble the cause may be.”
           “Then why did you bring me here?” Simone asked, her voice raised, her anger rising.  “Why would you ask me to come all this way to some restaurant if you weren’t going to take my case?”
           When Nick wouldn’t answer her, not because he didn’t want to but because he didn’t know himself, she grabbed her backpack and stood to her feet. 
           “Sit down, Simone,” Nick said calmly.
           Simone looked at him as if he had just asked her to stand on her head, and then hurriedly left the restaurant, nearly colliding with one waiter, nearly causing another to lose his tray, as she went.
           Mark laughed.  “I get the feeling we were just in the presence of a category five, my man.”
           Nick, however, grimaced as he took another long drag on his cigarette, unable to forget the disappointment he saw in those big, green eyes of hers, and then snuffed the whole thing out.
     
    They saw her again.  It happened after they’d finished their meals and Nick was driving out of the parking lot to take Mark back to the firm so that Mark could retrieve his car.  She was sitting at the bus stop at an intersection south of the restaurant, staring into the night.
    “Uh-oh, there’s the hurricane,” Mark said when the SUV stopped at the intersection’s red light and both he and Nick looked over and saw her sitting there.  Unlike Mark, who was disgusted by the view, Nick’s heartbeat quickened when he saw her.  He pressed down the passenger side window and leaned across Mark.  “Hello again,” he said.
    Simone at first looked as if she was looking to see who was this fresh behind man in this flashy truck trying to hit on her, but then she remembered the truck at the same time that she saw Nick’s handsome face.  Her heart fluttered. 
    “Waiting on a bus?” he asked her with a smile.  She wanted to warm up to him, especially when he smiled, but her heart knew better.  Every time she thought that somebody might just mean her well, she sadly, often tragically, found out that they didn’t.
    That’s why she looked away from him. 
    “All right, Simone,” he said with a tinge of impatience.  “Get in.”
    “No, thank-you,” Simone replied without looking at him.
               “No?”  Nick said as if he wasn’t at all used to being turned down.  “Look, I’m not asking you again, okay?  The light’s about to change.”
    Simone looked at him, perplexed by his insistence.  “I said no thank-you,” she replied, as if he was all kinds of dumb.
    Nick stared at her, at the defiance in those haunting green eyes of hers, a defiance that made it clear she wasn’t about to bend.  And it angered him, because he knew she was doomed, because he knew that her rigidity and inability to balance her emotions would someday do her in.  “Simone, I’m not leaving you here.”
    Still no response from her.  Not because she was defiant, but because she didn’t know why he’d even care.  Nobody else ever had.
    “Simone?” he said again, this time unable to shield at all his impatience.
    When she didn’t respond this time, he gave up, which was easy enough to do since the light had turned green and the few cars behind him were just beginning to blow their horns.  He shifted his gear and left Simone, not to mention those horn-blowers, as blurs in his rearview.
    But his defiant departure wasn’t with as much pleasure as Simone might have thought.  For by the time he had dropped Mark off, who couldn’t get over how that Simone Rivers could even think about talking to Nick Perry that way, Nick Perry just flat couldn’t get over Simone.  He admired her spunkiness and how feisty she was.  He loved the way she was willing to fight for her kid sister even when that ship had long since sailed.  She was strong and tough and no