Total pages in book: 179
Estimated words: 173733 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 869(@200wpm)___ 695(@250wpm)___ 579(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 173733 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 869(@200wpm)___ 695(@250wpm)___ 579(@300wpm)
“I just had coffee spilled all over me while wearing it.”
“And I kissed you.”
“Yes, actually, there is that.”
I have a brief moment in which I contemplate charging down the steps and pulling her back into the bathroom, where I would set her on the counter. Next her skirt would go up her gorgeous legs, and I would settle a knee in between her thighs, and rip off her panties rather than melt them. I would then lick her until she moans, tugs on my hair, and begs for more. But I have fucking court.
Instead, I simply say, “See you in court, Cat,” before I turn away and head into the coffee shop again, where I stop for napkins, and head for the door, motivated to win my case, and Cat. And I am going to win with Cat. One lick at a time, if that’s what it takes.
Chapter seven
Cat
Reese is making me crazy. Since I met him, I can’t think straight. I can’t sleep. I can’t even get a cup of coffee without it ending up all over me. He’s trouble. He’s my job. He’s an incredible kisser. I hate him. I want to hit him. I’m all over the board with this man.
These are the thoughts I have over and over as I rush to my apartment to put on a pink dress I don’t often wear to court. But I somehow end up in it anyway. Just like I somehow ended up with Reese’s lips on my lips. Maybe that is the value of pink. It’s innocence and sweetness. If I look the role, I’ll behave the role. I’ll scare off the deviant, arrogant assholes like Reese. Whom I hate.
I don’t second-guess the dress as I step out of my building again, but I do in fact second-guess just how I allowed his hands to end up on my body, in a coffee shop, in the middle of this trial. I hurry toward the black sedan Uber I’ve prearranged and climb inside, greeting the middle-aged man behind the wheel. “Hello.”
He gives a wave but doesn’t speak, and perhaps I should question the weird triangle bald spot on his head that cannot be natural, but this is Manhattan. Antennas on the man’s head wouldn’t even be as weird as some of the things I’ve seen in my almost thirty years in this city.
We make it all of one block before we’re in a dead stop and my cellphone rings in my purse. Digging it out, I note Reese’s number. “Shouldn’t you be with your client?”
“That implies a crisis to manage, which also implies the prosecution, not me or my team. Do you always taste like chocolate and coffee?”
“Do you always taste like arrogance?
“Better arrogance than an inability to please,” he replies.
“That was a ridiculously arrogant answer.”
“Back to the kiss. Better yet, let’s talk about you and your confessed desire to get naked with me.”
“I did not say that.”
“You did.”
He’s right. I kind of did. “That was then,” I say.
“When you hated me.”
“I didn’t hate you,” I say. “I just didn’t like you.”
“And yet you wanted to get naked with me?”
“I said I considered that option. A one and done.”
“Sweetheart, the fact that you believe that’s an option tells me you’ve never been properly fucked. So let’s be clear. If a man fucks you, and you have the ability to be one and done, he did it wrong. And I don’t intend to do it wrong. Until later, Cat. And Cat, I can still taste you on my lips.”
He hangs up.
My phone rings again almost instantly, and I answer with, “You know what they say. A guy who talks big—”
“Has a little dick. Don’t I know it.”
At the sound of my agent’s voice, I cringe. “Liz. I thought you were—”
“A man who pissed you off. I hope there’s incredible make-up sex to follow. After the trial. Stay focused. What you’re writing is working for you and me. The publisher is preempting you with six figures to ensure you don’t go elsewhere,” she says. “But they want a lot of creative control.”
“What kind of control?”
“They want to attach portions of your money to specific interviews that have to be included.”
“I don’t like that. That isn’t how I work. And if that’s how they want to play this, I’ll write the book and then let you take it out to publishers when it’s done. Then it’s done my way.”
“I knew you’d say that, but I needed to confirm. But there is more. They’re in talks with Dan Miller for a book. They want you to consider co-writing it.”
“The prosecutor? You have got to be kidding me. He’s going to lose this case and he’s a jerk. No one wants a book from a jerk and a loser.”
“It plays out like this: The real story. What the jury wasn’t allowed to know but the prosecution did.”