Night Fever. Diana Palmer

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      “A renovated Sherman tank—at least, that’s what it feels like early on a cold morning.” She smiled across at him. “You don’t have to take me out to lunch. I’ll make you late.”

      “No, you won’t. I’ve got time. Is your brother a pusher, Rebecca?”

      She gaped. “No!”

      He glanced at her as he eased into the turning lane. “Fair enough. Try to keep him out of it. I’ve got my sights on the Harris family. I’m going to nail them before I get out of office, no matter what it takes. Drugs on the street, that’s one thing. Drugs in grammar school—not in my county.”

      “You can’t be serious!” she exclaimed. “In midtown, maybe, but not in Curry Station Elementary!”

      “We found crack,” he said, “in a student’s locker. He was ten years old and a pusher.” He looked across at her, scowling. “My God, you can’t be that naive. Don’t you know that hundreds of grammar school kids are sent to jail every year for pushing narcotics, or that one kid out of every four has addicted parents in Georgia?”

      “I didn’t,” she confessed. She leaned her head against the window. “Whatever happened to kids going to school and playing with frogs and having spelling bees and sock hops?”

      “Wrong generation. This one can dissect a bee and the hops are in the beer they drink. They still go to school, of course, where they learn subjects in grammar school that I didn’t get until I was in high school. Accelerated learning, Miss Cullen. We want our kids to be adults early so that we won’t have the bother of childhood traumas. We’re producing miniature adults, and the latchkey kids are at the top of the class.”

      “Mothers have to work,” she began.

      “So they do. Over fifty percent of them are out there in the work force, while their kids are split up and locked up and divided into stepfamilies.” He lit a cigar without asking if she minded. He knew that she did. “Women won’t have total equality until men can get pregnant.”

      She grinned. “You’d have one horrible delivery, I imagine.”

      He chuckled softly. “No doubt, and with my luck, it would be a breech birth.” He shook his head. “It’s been a rotten day. I’ve been prosecuting two juveniles as adults this week and I’m bitter. I want more parents who care about their damned kids. It’s my favorite theme.”

      “You don’t have any children, I guess?” she asked shyly.

      He pulled into a Crystal hamburger place and parked. “No. I’m old-fashioned. I think kids come after marriage.” He opened his door and got out, helping her out before he locked it. “Feel like a hamburger or chili?”

      “Chili,” she said instantly. “With Tabasco sauce on the side.”

      “You’re one of those, are you?” he mused, his dark eyes teasing.

      “One of those what?” she asked.

      He let his hands slide down to enfold hers, and she caught her breath audibly. He paused at the door and looked down again, catching the shocked delight that registered on her soft oval face, in her hazel eyes with their flecks of gold. She looked as surprised as he felt at the contact that ran like electricity through his hand, into his body, tautening it with unexpected pleasure.

      “Soft hands,” he remarked, frowning slightly. “Calloused fingers. What do you do at home?”

      “Wash, cook, clean, garden,” she said. “They’re working hands.”

      He lifted them and turned them in his lean, warm ones, studying the long, elegant fingers with their short, unpolished nails. They looked like working hands, but they were elegant, for all that. Impulsively, he bent and brushed his mouth softly over the knuckles.

      “Mr. Kilpatrick!” she burst out, flushing.

      His head raised and his eyes danced. “Just the Irish side of me coming out. The Cherokee side, of course, would have you over a horse and out of the country by sundown.”

      “Did they have horses?”

      “Yes. I’ll tell you all about them one day.” When he linked his fingers with hers and led her inside the hamburger shop, she felt as if she were sleepwalking.

      They got their food, found an unoccupied table, and sat down. Becky spooned chili into her mouth while he wolfed down two cheeseburgers and two orders of French fries.

      “God, I’m starved,” he murmured. “I never can find enough time to eat these days. The calendar’s overflowing; I’m working most weekends and nights. I even argue cases in my sleep.”

      “I thought you had assistants to do that.”

      “Our caseload is unbelievable,” he said, “despite plea-bargaining and guilty pleas. I’ve got people in jail who shouldn’t be, waiting for their cases to be put on the court calendar. There aren’t enough courts, or enough judges, or enough jails.”

      “Or enough prosecutors?”

      He smiled at her across his chocolate milk shake. “Or enough prosecutors,” he said. His dark eyes slid over her face and back up to catch her eyes. The smile faded and the look grew intimate. “I don’t want to get involved with you, Rebecca Cullen.”

      His bluntness took a little getting used to. She swallowed. “Don’t you?”

      “You’re still a virgin, aren’t you?”

      She went scarlet.

      His eyebrow jerked. “And I didn’t even have to guess,” he said ruefully. He finished the milk shake. “Well, I don’t seduce virgins. Uncle Sanderson wanted me to be a gentleman instead of a red Indian, so he taught me exquisite manners. I have a conscience, thanks to his blasted interference.”

      She shifted in her seat, unsure if he was serious or teasing. “I don’t fall into bed with strange men,” she began.

      “You wouldn’t fall, you’d be carried,” he pointed out. “And I’m not strange. I do set fire to my office occasionally, and stand on my dog’s tail, but that isn’t so odd.”

      She smiled gently, feeling warm ripples up and down her body as she looked at him, liking the strength of his high-cheekboned face, the power and grace of his body. He was a very sensuous man. He was stealing her heart, and she couldn’t even save herself.

      “I’m not the liberated type,” she said quietly. “I’m very conventional. I was raised strictly, despite my father, and in the church. I suppose that sounds archaic to you...”

      “Uncle Sanderson was a deacon in the Baptist church,” he interrupted. “I was baptized at the age of ten and went to Sunday school until I graduated high school. You aren’t the only archaic specimen around.”

      “Yes, but you’re a man.”

      “I hope so,” he sighed. “Otherwise, I’ve spent a fortune on a wardrobe I can’t wear.”

      She laughed with pure delight. СКАЧАТЬ