Free Heat Wave by Judith Arnold Page A

gaze dropped to his free hand, and then
to hers, their fingers so close a twitch would have them touching.
She shifted her leftovers from her other hand. Better to keep those
fingers occupied with a container of shrimp.
    She started walking up the wharf toward the
parking lot, and he fell into step beside her. The wind caught in
her hair, blowing a few strands into her face. It tangled his hair,
too. His hair was a chestnut brown, long enough for a woman to
twine her fingers through. She wished she hadn’t noticed that,
either.
    What had happened to make her so painfully
aware of him? They’d eaten dinner, that was all—eaten dinner and
exchanged idle chatter. They’d talked about the song from the
jukebox in the tavern yesterday, and that should have qualified as
idle chatter, too. But for some reason, it didn’t. Simply thinking
about it had skewed things. It had cast everything in a different
light, as if a tinted lens had been placed between her and the
world.
      Heat
Wave . The evening had cooled down. Yet by the time
they’d reached the lot, Meredith felt ridiculously warm. Caleb
stayed with her as she strolled to her Prius. He stood patiently as
she unlocked the door and swung it open. Then he spoke. “Thanks for
dinner. It was delicious.”
    “I’ve never had a bad meal at the Lobster
Shack,” she said.
    They faced each other, the heat of her car’s
interior spilling out into the evening and augmenting the heat she
felt inside her. She was tall, but Caleb was taller. Tall and lean,
his features sharp, his dark eyes intense as he met her gaze. “The
company wasn’t so bad, either,” he said.
    As compliments went, that was pretty mild.
Yet her body temperature seemed to spike another few degrees.
“Well. I’m still willing to pay you a fee, if you’d send me a
bill.”
    “I think we’re all squared away,” he assured
her.
    “Most lawyers would prefer payment.”
    “I’m not most lawyers.”
    Was his face really so close to hers? His
mouth so near? Was it his breath she felt on her cheek, or just a
wisp of wind sweeping off the water?
    Whatever she might be thinking, or bracing
herself for, fearing or hoping for, didn’t happen. He thrust his
right hand out to her for a shake. “Thanks again.”
    A handshake. Right. That was the way an
attorney and his client parted ways. She slipped her hand in his
and told herself she was just imagining that he squeezed hers
slightly as they shook. Then he grinned—those dimples again—nodded,
pivoted on his heel and strode across the lot to a shiny black
Audi.
    She slid behind the wheel of her car, closed
the door, and started the engine. Through the windshield, she
watched Caleb climb into his sporty car, rev the engine, and peel
out of the lot. She remained where she was, waiting for the air
conditioner to kick in. It hissed, it sighed, but it didn’t cool
her down.
     
     

Chapter Seven
     
    Blanche Larson had a face like a bulldog, a
bark like a junkyard cur, and the personality of a border collie.
She liked order. She herded facts into neat arrangements and
spotted every stray datum, every outlier. Caleb had worked with her
on other cases, and she’d never let him down. If there was a
questionable transaction, an unsubstantiated expenditure, the
merest blip in a financial record, she would find it.
    “I’ll need everything,” she reminded Caleb.
Even over the phone, her voice conjured an image of a large, angry
mutt baring its pointy teeth. Fortunately, he knew her well enough
not to be daunted by her growl. “Valenti’s financials as well as
Felton’s, and the town’s,” she said. “I need everything.”
    “I’m working on it,” he assured her. “I’ve
requested Valenti’s info from the DA. I don’t think he’s looked at
it yet. He just took her word for everything, and she dumped all
the blame on Jerry Felton. Of course the DA wants to believe her.
Indicting a high-ranking public official gets him a lot of