Free The Bad Judgment Series: The Complete Series by Leigh James Page B

really wanted to say something else right then, but he didn’t. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
    “I’ll pick you up tomorrow morning, then,” he said. “Text me your address.”
    “I need to run an errand first thing in the morning,” I said, knowing that I needed a new suit before the arraignment. “So I’ll text you while I’m out. Is ten-thirty okay?” I asked. He nodded. “What’s your number?”
    Five awkward minutes later, I was sitting in the back of the cab, staring at his phone number in my contacts. My fingers lingered over his number and I smiled to myself. Then I fanned myself the whole way home. In spite of my better judgment.
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    O nce I got back to my apartment, I ripped off my suit and my bra, threw on my sweats, poured myself a very large glass of wine and silently thanked God that Mike wasn’t here. Not necessarily in that order.
    Then I sat down and took out my notebook. I could not let my hormones get in the way of providing my client the best possible defense money could buy. I wanted to show him, David Proctor, and all the other senior partners that that’s exactly what I was— the best. This was my chance, and I was going to show all of them. Walker included.
    I was a list-maker by nature; I loved crossing things off. It helped me to calm down, to make order out of chaos. So I thought about what Walker had told me tonight, and I mentally filed it all away. But what I was going to need more than anything was a charge by charge rebuttal. So I listed the charges against him:
    Federal racketeering charges
    Multiple counts of:
    Grand larceny
    Fraud
    Conspiracy
    None of these charges made any sense to me whatsoever. Walker hadn’t even touched on them. I sent him a quick text: We didn’t discuss actual charges. Think about it. That’s what we’re doing first thing.
    Are you still on the clock? Go to bed and stop billing me, he texted back immediately. I smiled at my phone. I couldn’t help myself.
    I sat, my phone next to me, and stared out into space. I couldn’t picture the man I’d spent the afternoon with defrauding his own company, his own shareholders, and cheating the government. He was arrogant, yes, but he’d earned his arrogance. He was also kind. Blue Securities was his baby; he’d invented the original technology himself, when he’d needed it while serving our country. And in terms of fraud, and larceny — I just couldn’t reconcile these things with the Walker I’d been with today. He already had everything he could want, everything money could buy. He didn’t seem like the sort who wanted to have excess, like shower curtains that cost thousands of dollars; he didn’t seem the type that would host a company party that would require ice sculptures of Greek gods that pissed expensive vodka, like some CEOs who’d gotten into trouble in the past. If he did, he could surely afford it all without ripping off his own company.
    He could be hiding something , I decided. He might never tell me the truth. And he might never show me who he really was. He could be a “deny until you die” sort of fellow — there were all sorts of them in corporate life. Still, if it were true, if he was guilty — I would be disappointed in myself. Here, in the quiet of my apartment, I could be honest with myself and admit it: I really liked him. He seemed like a good person.
    Yes, he was beautiful. Any impartial jury of his peers could see that. And he was complimentary, flirtatious — and charming, I thought, and definitely hard to resist . Cue the list of hot starlets he’d slept with. I willed myself to be reasonable. Part of the reason he was irresistible was because it was a practiced art, and he’d been doing it for years. Ever since he outgrew his mad-scientist geek stage and turned into a smoking-hot babe. He’d probably slept with a very large number of women, a realization that made me frown deeply.
    All that aside, I still genuinely liked him. I would be disappointed