“No. I’m just short.”
“Your hell-on-wheels attitude makes you seem a lot taller.”
She laid a hand above her breast. “Attitude? I don’t have an attitude.”
“Yeah, you do, Counselor.”
“It’s Alisha,” she said, throwing his words back at him. “And you have to have a little bit of an attitude in this business to be taken seriously, especially if you’re a woman.”
He gave her a long glance from face to feet, pausing in between. “Believe me, it’s more than obvious you’re a woman, attitude or no attitude.” When he moved closer and pushed a wayward curl from her shoulder, she immediately tensed. “Relax. I’m not going to jump you.”
“Do you think I’d be here if I really believed you would?” she said without looking at him.
“Something’s making you nervous.”
“Okay, I admit it, being here with you makes me nervous.” She sent a quick glance his way. “Are you happy now?”
He could think of several things that would make him happy. Having her nervous wasn’t one of them. “I’m strung a little tight myself.”
That brought her attention back to him. “The iceman nervous? The prosecutor who prides himself on being totally in control?”
God, he hated that whole “iceman” thing. “Believe me, I’m not always in control.” Right now his control was in jeopardy. “And under certain circumstances, I’m definitely not the iceman.”
“You could’ve fooled me. I’ve never seen you look the least bit on edge.”
“Maybe you haven’t been looking hard enough. Or maybe you just don’t want to see it because around you I’m always on edge.”
“Around me?”
Time for the truth, regardless of the consequences. “Yeah. Every time I’m near you. Don’t pretend you haven’t noticed this thing between us.”
“What thing?” Her sudden inability to look at him contradicted her denial.
“The one we’ve been skirting for the past few months.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Okay, have it your way. I’ll spell it out for you.”
“Please do.”
When Daniel inched a little closer, this time Alisha didn’t move. In fact, she felt as if her bottom had been bonded to the cushions or perhaps she was simply mesmerized by his aura.
“I noticed you for the first time last year, while you were still working for Gailey and company,” he said. “But I also noticed you were with Troy Moreau most of the time and I sensed something was going on between the two of you.”
He had that one nailed. “We worked together quite a bit.” The truth. “Nothing more to it than that.” A lie.
The look he gave her said he didn’t exactly believe her. “Back then I didn’t approach you for that reason and because I was involved with someone, too.”
“Who?” Did she have to sound so absurdly jealous?
“It doesn’t matter. That’s been over a long time. When I heard you’d been added to the public-defender rolls, I started looking for you.”
Unbelievable. “You started looking for me?”
“Yeah. Do you remember that day you negotiated the plea on the Jones case back in August?”
“That was my first case as a public defender.”
“Do you remember me coming in to sign off on the deal because the D.A. was out of the office?”
Boy, did she, right down to every detail, including the red diamond pattern on his navy tie. “Yes.”
“I didn’t have to be there. Hildebrand talked to me about it beforehand and I’d given my okay. I came in because I wanted to see you.”
Alisha felt the creep of a blush climbing up her throat. “Really?”
He smiled. “Really. And after that I kept searching you out just so I could talk to you. Didn’t you ever wonder why we kept running into each other?”
“I assumed you just found provoking me so much fun, you couldn’t stay away.”
“I didn’t want to stay away from you. The provocation was just a cover for the fact that I wanted to know you better. A lot better.”
She was having a difficult time buying any of this. She was having a harder time remaining upright while he was so close. “I bet you say that to all the girls downtown.”
“No. And if you’re going to say you haven’t noticed the chemistry between us, Alisha, then you’re lying to yourself and to me.”
Confession time, she thought. “All right, maybe I did notice.”
“You’ve also noticed my ass.”
Wonderful. She’d been caught. “Unless you have eyes in the back of your head, I don’t see how you could know that.”
“When I was standing at the bar a minute ago, getting your wine, I was watching you in the mirror and saw you giving it a look. But that’s okay because I’ve looked at yours more than once.”
Alisha’s head started to whirl, but it wasn’t the limited amount of alcohol that had her thoughts so jumbled. It was him. “Why did you wait until now to tell me all of this?”
He reached up and brushed another rebellious strand of hair away from her cheek. “You kept giving mixed signals every time I was around you. Stop, go, maybe. I was never sure how you were going to respond to any kind of overture from me. But after I saw you tonight, sitting in that bar alone, looking so damn good, it was all I could do not to grab you up and carry you out.”
Aha! His true motive. She was the only one alone and, therefore, available. “I thought this was all about friendship.”
“I’m willing to settle for friendship, if that’s all you want. But it’s going to be tough when I’ve had some fairly serious fantasies about you for months now.”
They couldn’t be half as wicked as hers involving him. “What kind of fantasies?”
He ran a slow fingertip up and down her forearm. “Like the other day, when we passed each other in the stairwell. You had on that brown suit—”
“Yes, and if I recall correctly, you told me brown wasn’t flattering on me.”
“I told you that because what I really wanted to do was take it off you, especially when you leaned your arm on the rail, your jacket parted and I saw just a glimpse of right here.” He drew a line down from her collarbone to the side of her breast, causing a shiver to run the length of Alisha’s body. “That little bit of bare flesh had me wondering exactly what you had on underneath that jacket. Five more seconds and I might have tried to find out.”
Alisha shivered. “I see.”
He toyed with the silver-and-green chandelier earring hanging from her lobe. “I’m not sure you do. But let me tell you about my favorite fantasy, then maybe you will see.”
Alisha wasn’t sure her heart could take much more. It was already beating like a bongo against her chest. But she had to know. “Since you seem to be on a roll, continue.”
He grinned. “You know that sofa in Riley’s chambers?”
“The ugly plaid one?”
“Yeah. The