Free Justice Hunter by Harper Dimmerman Page A

earth I’d ever expected to get together with. But we did, and it was exciting while it lasted.”
    “The whole lawyer-slash-judge dynamic? Master servant?”
    “I guess you could say that.”
    “I’m just trying to picture Mancini being overpowered. Playing the subservient one.”
    “Oh, he was a kinky one, all right. Anyway, we were pretty discreet. But I guess I lost perspective. Fell a little too hard and set myself up for disaster.”
    “Understandable. You were craving something monogamous.”
    “Maybe.” Sheila continued, “I was absolutely devastated when I found out he was cheating. It was the worst-case scenario under the circumstances.”
    “And obviously Mancini knew about the thing with Joe?” Not that it mattered, Hunter realized after he’d already posed the question.
    “When we started to get serious, I told him about it.” Sheila paused, drudging up the pain. “He reassured me. And of course I fell for it. Total misrepresentation.” Couching Mancini’s conduct in legal speak was one way to emotionally insulate herself.
    “Someone gets an A in the heartlessness category.” Hunter couldn’t help but recall his own pain after learning of Monica’s affair.
    “That’s Mancini for you.” Sheila offered a composed smile, fearful of coming off as a total basket case. She had every right to be one, though.
    “So are you ready to run for the hills or what?”
    “I’ll stay for now,” he replied in jest.
    Sheila smiled warmly. “So now that the cat’s out of the bag, maybe you can see why I’m more than a little suspicious of Mancini’s motives.”
    And then it hit him like a ton of bricks. Is it possible Mancini knows about us? he wondered. “Do you think—”
    “No,” she interrupted. “Impossible.”
    “How can you be so sure?” For all intents and purposes, Mancini was God at Whitman. In fact, omniscience was practically a prerequisite for chairmanship at a big firm. The firm tracked the comings and goings of its associates like Big Brother. Plus it was a known fact that the supervising partners monitored the files accessed by associates from the corporate servers. Attrition and productivity were on all the partners’ radars, so auditing e-mails and phone conversations was not outside the realm of possibility. Hunter had every reason to be concerned. “I’ve e-mailed you from my company BlackBerry before.”
    “And?” she asked dismissively. “Don’t be so…”
    “What? Paranoid?”
    “Yes. Paranoid. I can assure you that Mancini has much better things to do with his time than spy on his associates.”
    Now frustrated, he asked, “When you broke things off, how did he take it?”
    “If you’re asking whether he’s some type of a stalker or something, then the answer is a resounding no. He was probably relieved more than anything else.”
    “So he wasn’t still into you? I mean, did he try to right his wrongs? Salvage the relationship after you discovered his philandering ways?”
    “Nothing really comes to mind. I mean, it was a while ago already.”
    “And he never tried to win you back?”
    “No.” She paused. “Look, he screwed up, and I got hurt. That’s how it happened.”
    “And he never struck you as the jealous type?”
    Sheila rested her hand at her chin contemplatively. Hunter noticed the French manicure. A turn-on. “We both know you never truly know someone. People we are convinced we know shock us all the time. Does Al fall into that category? Certainly. And he isn’t the type to exactly wear his emotions on his sleeve, if you know what I mean. So I guess you can say that anything’s possible.”
    At that moment, Hunter realized he was probably overreacting. Yet he couldn’t help but wonder whether there was a connection to Sheila that prompted Mancini to assign him the Vito’s case.
    Their impatient waitress was tableside again. Hunter ordered, yet Sheila seemed distracted. She was staring at something, or rather someone, at the back of