Night Fever. Diana Palmer

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СКАЧАТЬ the cigar to his mouth and took a draw from it, blowing out a thick cloud of smoke. “I hope you take his clothes off first,” he said. “Honey is hard to get out of fabric. This is my floor.”

      She stepped back to let him off, glaring at him. This wasn’t their first encounter. He’d been making terrible remarks and scoring off her since the first day she’d been in the building, and she was heartily sick of him—whoever he was.

      “Have a nice day,” she drawled sweetly.

      He didn’t even turn. “I was, until you came along.”

      “Why don’t you take your cigar and stick it up your...?!”

      After the doors closed off her last word, the car carried her unwillingly up to the fourteenth floor, where a man and woman were waiting to go down.

      She noticed the floor number with a sigh. He was ruining her life. Why did he have to work in this building, when there was all of Atlanta for him to get lost in?

      The elevator descended, and this time it opened on the sixth floor. Still fuming, she went into her bosses’ lavish office, glancing as she walked at Maggie and Jessica, the other two secretaries, hard at work on opposite sides of the office. Becky had a cubbyhole adjacent to Bob Malcolm’s. He was the junior partner, and her main boss.

      Without knocking, she entered the big office to find Bob and two of his junior colleagues, Harley and Jarard, impatiently waiting for their coffee while Bob talked irritably on the phone.

      “Just put it down anywhere, Becky, and thank you,” he said brusquely, with his hand over the receiver. He glanced at one of his colleagues. “Kilpatrick just walked in the door. How’s that for timing?”

      Becky passed the cups of coffee quietly and received mumbled thank-yous from Harley and Jarard. Bob began to speak into the telephone again.

      “Listen, Kilpatrick, all I want is a conference. I’ve got some new evidence I want you to see.” Her boss banged his fist on the desk and his swarthy face reddened. “Dammit, man, do you have to be so inflexible?!” He sighed angrily, “All right, all right. I’ll be up in five minutes.” He slammed the receiver down. “My God, I’m praying he won’t run for reelection,” he said heavily. “This is only the second week I’ve had to deal with him, and I’m already sweating blood! Give me Dan Wade any day!”

      Dan Wade was the Atlanta judicial circuit’s D.A. Becky knew he was a nice man. But here in Curry County, the district attorney was Rourke Kilpatrick. Perhaps, she thought optimistically, her employer had just gotten off on the wrong foot with Kilpatrick. He was probably every bit as nice as Dan Wade when you got to know him.

      She started to point this out to Mr. Malcolm when Harley broke in. “Can you blame him?” Harley asked. “He’s had more death threats in the past month over this drug war than any president. He’s a hard man, and he won’t back down. I’ve had a couple of cases down here before, and I know Kilpatrick’s reputation. He can’t be bought. He’s a law-and-order man from the feet up.”

      Bob sat back in his plush leather chair. “I get cold chills remembering how Kilpatrick once eviscerated a witness of mine on the stand. She actually had to be tranquilized after she testified.”

      “Is Mr. Kilpatrick really that bad?” Becky asked with soft curiosity.

      “Yes,” her boss replied. “You’ve never met him, have you? He’s working here in this building now, temporarily, while his office is being redecorated. It’s part of that courthouse renovation the county commission voted in. It’s pretty convenient for us to go up a floor rather than over to the courthouse. Of course, Kilpatrick hates it.”

      “Kilpatrick hates most everything, including people.” Hague grinned. “They say that mean temperament comes from his heritage. He’s part Indian—Cherokee, to be exact. His mother came here to live with his father’s people when Kilpatrick’s father died. She died pretty soon afterward, so Kilpatrick became the ward of his uncle. The uncle was the head of one of the founding families of Curry Station and he literally forced Kilpatrick down local society’s throats. He was a federal judge,” he added, smiling. “I guess that’s where Kilpatrick learned his love of the law. Uncle Kilpatrick, you see, couldn’t be bought.”

      “Well, I’ll go up anyway and offer him my soul on behalf of our shady client,” Bob Malcolm said. “Harley, get the brief ready for the Bronson trial, if you don’t mind. And Jarard, Tyler’s down at the clerk’s office working on that estate suit you’re researching.”

      “Okay. I’ll get busy,” Harley said with a smile. “You might send Becky up to work on Kilpatrick. She might soften him up.”

      Malcolm laughed gently. “He’d eat her for breakfast,” he told the other man. He turned to Becky. “You can help Maggie while I’m away, if you don’t mind. There’s some filing to catch up.”

      “Okay,” she said, smiling. “Good luck.”

      He whistled, smiling back. “I’ll need it.”

      She watched him go with a wistful sigh. He was a caring kind of person, even if he did have the temper of a barracuda.

      Maggie showed her the filing that needed doing with an indulgent smile. The petite, thin black woman had been with the firm for twenty years, and she knew where all the bodies were buried. Becky had wondered sometimes if that was why Maggie had job security, because she had a sharp tongue—she could be hard on clients and new secretaries alike. But fortunately, she and Becky got along very well—they even had lunch together from time to time. Maggie was the only person she could talk to except Granddad.

      Jessica, the elegant blond secretary on the other side of the office, was Mr. Hague and Mr. Randers’s secretary. She enjoyed her status as Mr. Hague’s after-hours escort—he wasn’t married or likely to be anytime soon—and she primped a lot. Tess Coleman was one of the paralegals—a just-married young blonde with a friendly smile. Nettie Hayes, a black law student, was the other paralegal. The receptionist was Connie Blair, a vivacious brunette who was unmarried and in no hurry to change her status. Becky got along well with the rest of the office staff, but Maggie was still her favorite.

      “They’re going to buy a new coffee urn, by the way,” Maggie mentioned while Becky filed. “I can go shopping for it tomorrow.”

      “I could go,” Becky offered.

      “No, dear, I’ll do it,” Maggie said with a smile. “I want to pick up a present for my sister-in-law while I’m out. She’s expecting.”

      Becky smiled back, but halfheartedly. Life was passing her by. She’d never even had a real date, except to go to a VFW Club dance with the grandson of a friend of her grandfather, and that had been a real bust. The boy smoked pot and liked to party, and he didn’t understand why Becky didn’t.

      The word around the office was that Becky was an old-fashioned girl. In such a confined society, eligible bachelors were pretty rare anyway, and the few who were left weren’t looking for instant matrimony. Becky had hoped that when the law firm moved to Curry Station, she might have a little more opportunity for a social life. For a suburban area, it did at least have a small-town atmosphere. But even if she found someone to date, how could she afford to get serious about anybody? She couldn’t leave her grandfather alone, and who’d look after Clay and Mack? Daydreams, she thought miserably. She was being sacrificed to look after her family, and there just wasn’t any way out. Her father СКАЧАТЬ