Free Objection Overruled by J.K. O'Hanlon Page B

the fact she knew him. How would she handle being alone with him? “Now?”
    “I’d rather spend the rest of the day with you on my sailboat making you my famous plum-glazed lamb chops, washing them down with a bottle of Shiraz, and then talking until our voices are raw or the sun comes up. And perhaps we’d find some time for something a little more physically challenging. As a consolation prize, though, I’ll settle for a pizza with you in your office reviewing documents.”
    She frowned, trying to remember the rules taught in her law school ethics class about contact with an opposing party’s expert witness. The community of expert witnesses in the financial area was surprisingly small, tight-knit, and cordial. Having handled her share of cases involving securities violations, Jackie knew most of the hired guns in that field.
    Experts commonly testified for a plaintiff in one case and a defendant in another. When a case finished, the attorneys and experts often met at the bar around the corner from the courthouse for a drink. After all, the experts’ duty or loyalty belonged to the court, even though one side paid their fees.
    Unfortunately, she’d never heard of any rules regarding having sex with the opposing side’s expert. She wasn’t having sex with him now, however. She also knew that whatever it was she had with Brandon was more than just sex.
    “Yo, lady, watch it,” a cab driver shouted at her when she stepped into traffic on Light Street. Someone grabbed her upper arm and pulled her back onto the sidewalk.
    She swung her briefcase in an arc across her body and back into the person holding her.
    “Hey, easy there.” Brandon deflected her bag’s blow.
    “Brandon, what are you doing lurking back there?” Jackie pulled her cell phone from her ear and crossed her arms over her chest as if to hide from him her pounding heart. “Are you stalking me?”
    He took a step back and raised his hands in mock admission of defeat, his phone still in one hand. He tilted his head impishly to the side. “You caught me. I surrender.”
    Jackie couldn’t stop her stare. She just kept looking at him. His angular jaw, smooth at the beginning of the day, showed a slight stubble in a mosaic of reds, browns, and blonds. He remained impossibly cool looking in his suit even in the late-afternoon’s baking sun and suffocating humidity. The familiar electric shock in her spine traveled south, and wetness built between her legs. Her body had divorced itself from her mind, it seemed.
    She shook her head in resignation. “Come on. At least you can walk next to me and not lurk in my shadow. My office is about a half mile away. Let me leave Gary a message that we’re meeting. I don’t want to be accused of doing anything behind his back.”
    As they walked, Jackie placed a call to Fenton & Stone and spoke with the associate, Kevin. Gary was unavailable. What a surprise. As she’d suspected, and hoped, Kevin declined her offer to sit in on Brandon’s review of documents. Even though babysitting an expert was an easy way to rack up billable hours, he explained his calendar was full. She’d bet anything he was anxious to get home to his wife and kids. Trial prep must be taking its toll on him too.
    By the time she finished up with Kevin, who had informed her to get ready for some serious documents the next day, Jackie’s office loomed on the next block. She pointed across the street and up the block to the squat concrete building sandwiched between beautifully restored brick three-story buildings. “Thar she blows, Cap’n.”
    Formerly warehouses, the row of brick buildings now housed chic boutiques, cafés, and bars on the ground floor and just as chic lofts on the upper floors. Like a bag lady walking the Paris runway, her building reeked of poverty and poor taste, a prime example of Soviet architecture’s inroads into America’s blighted neighborhoods.
    Built as a bank in the mid-1970s, it had heralded the promise of