Free Buried Evidence by Nancy Taylor Rosenberg Page B

connected on a much higher level.
    Joyce gazed up into his eyes, trapping his hand and placing it over her breast. He had crawled in the door like a snake, and already he had his hands in the cookie jar. Now he realized why married men had affairs. Not only was it physically exciting, the planning alone was challenging. The beauty of his situation was the fact that Joyce was not his wife. She might act like his wife, but without a formal commitment, there was only so much guilt she could lay on him. By taking on the Middleton case, he had provided himself with a way to spend time with Lily. Now he considered taking it a step further, possibly convincing Joyce that he should stay in a hotel during the course of the trial rather than exhaust himself by making such a long drive.
    What in the hell was he thinking?
    Men went off their rockers when it came time to end a relationship. The worst experience of his life had been discovering that Claire was having an affair. The fact that she’d fallen in love with a woman had been a jolt to his masculinity, but the wound itself had turned out to be nothing more than a mosquito bite. What difference did it make who she’d been having an affair with? She’d violated the sanctity of their marriage vows. He might toy with the notion of becoming a contemporary Don Juan, leaping in and out of beds from Ventura to Santa Barbara, but underneath he was a die-hard traditionalist. When you loved someone, you married them, remained faithful to them, devoted your life to them. If you didn’t love them… well… this was the muddle he found himself in with Joyce. The sex was great. Everything else was mediocre.
    Richard walked over to the small built-in desk in the corner of the kitchen, thumbing through a stack of mail. The envelope containing his American Express bill was over an inch thick, and the telephone bills were astronomical. Joyce might not be aware of it, but even before he had seen Lily today, he had been racking his brain trying to figure out a way to disentangle himself from their relationship. They’d been together for three years. This time he had let things rock along past the breaking point. He was a three-year man, particularly when the woman started throwingthings at him. The next time he pissed Joyce off, she might pitch one of her multicolored weights at him and crack his skull open.
    Joyce owned her own business, a small marketing and research firm. The past year or two had been difficult due to the massive amount of competition she’d encountered from similar companies on the Internet, some firms as far away as Alaska. Formerly, she had relied on her interpersonal skills, drawing most of her clients from the local community. Many of these accounts had fallen by the wayside, since the great majority of what she did could be handled remotely.
    His friends thought he was a fool for setting up housekeeping, then insisting on paying the majority of his girlfriend’s expenses. Most of his buddies had been married for years, though, and their wives ordered them around like drill sergeants. He certainly wasn’t going to take their advice. In addition, his married friends had no concept of how much time, energy, and money were involved in the process of dating. His law practice was thriving. So what if he spent a few thousand extra each month? All he was doing was buying himself a companion. Overall, it wasn’t such a bad situation, especially if a man had a tendency to get lonely. Slightly shallow perhaps, but since his relationship with Lily had ended, falling in love had not been at the top of his list of priorities.
    “I wouldn’t complain if I didn’t care,” Joyce said. “Linda and Bill were sweet enough to take me out for Chinese. I left some vegetable chow mein in the refrigerator for you. If you skipped dinner, eating an apple isn’t enough.”
    “I’m fine,” he said, wishing he could get in his car and drive back to Santa Barbara. Already he longed to