“Straightforward? You call turning my parking space into a no-parking zone straightforward? I call it extenuating circumstances,” Mike grumbled. “And I don’t believe you’re going to set aside your personal feelings to listen to my version.”
“Your version,” Lilly muttered, shaking her head. She already knew that version—she’d been on the receiving end of one of Mike’s versions a time or two. “Well, I have a version, too, Mr. Collier. You’ve stated for the record that you don’t believe I’m able to be unbiased here—that I’d allow my personal feelings to interfere with the law.” She shot him a caustic smile across her desk—an old, gray, metal office desk hunkering down into the sixty-year-old grooves in the unpolished linoleum floor. Unlike the judges upstairs, who towered above their domains at fine, hand-carved mahogany desks designed for looking down—desks that belonged in a courtroom—Lilly sat level with everyone else. Her official judge desk was plainly a castoff appropriate for her castoff court that convened in a damp, dim corner room in the city hall basement. “So let me tack a little something onto my version for you. Your first insult to the court is a freebie. My gift to you.” Leaning back in her seat, folding her arms across her chest, she continued, “But the next one will cost you, I’m thinking about a hundred bucks an insult, by the book, by the way. Sounds fair, doesn’t it?” She glanced over at her court clerk, Tisha Freeman, an early twenty-something who spent more time in the courtroom making eyes at the men than observing the proceedings. Tisha nodded her approval, not that she knew what she was nodding at, then smiled at the biker type seated in the second row who, with ripped-out shirt-sleeves, was flexing his muscles and tattoos for her.
Give me strength, Lilly thought, looking back at Mike. “And as far as your version, Mr. Collier? Other than the fact that you’ve admitted to parking in the same no-parking zone nineteen times in the past two months, what else is there to say but ‘I’m guilty, Your Honor, and I’ll be happy to pay the fine’?”
“Do I get to speak candidly here or are my rights forfeited the minute I step into your courtroom?” Mike Collier glanced around, shook his head in distinct disdain, then added, “Such as it is.”
“By all means, be candid, Mr. Collier. I certainly wouldn’t want you leaving my courtroom—such as it is—feeling like you didn’t receive every opportunity to tell your side of the story before I make my judgment and tack on an extra hundred bucks for that little insult.” She dropped her gaze to the file containing copies of all nineteen tickets, not to peruse what was in it so much as to stop herself from glaring at him. Of course, she already knew what he looked like—in every vivid detail, right down to the lips tattooed on his derriere. Right side, midcheek. A drunken college escapade—he’d passed out at a frat party and his frat brothers had hauled him to the nearest tattoo parlor. Then voilà! Big red lips, half the size of her fist. And of course, she could conjure up that eye candy in minute detail—along with every other Collier detail—even when she wasn’t looking at him, which she was trying not to do, especially in court. Geez, where’s an iceberg when you need one? And if she could have found a judge pro tem for the morning session, she would have gladly relinquished the helm.
She was the judge pro tem in traffic court, though. A perpetual temporary, because she hadn’t lived in Whittier long enough to qualify for the permanent job. But she would be crowned the regular queen of traffic court after a year there. And she wanted that to happen. Nobody liked the job, nobody wanted it and hardly anybody outside the janitor and a few assorted court employees ever wandered down into the judicial netherworld she called her work space, even though her department brought in a big chunk of the city budget, or so she’d been told when she’d dotted her i’s and crossed her t’s on the contract.
So unless she had two broken legs and amnesia, nobody, but nobody would be sitting in for her, not even for a few minutes. But that was okay because she actually liked her job.
Speeding tickets, parking tickets—everyone had an excuse for doing something wrong.
“Didn’t see the sign, Your Honor.”
“I had to go to the bathroom, Your Honor.”
“Thirty? I thought that was eighty, Your Honor.”
“I only left my car there for two minutes, Your Honor.”
“I wasn’t parked that far up on the sidewalk, Your Honor.”
Which was why Lilly got the traffic court job in the first place—nobody else wanted to hear the same ol’, same ol’ excuses. Low status, low regard, low pay. And literally the lowest room in the courthouse. But it was her low status, her low regard, her low pay and her lowest room in the courthouse. All hers!
So when she’d found out that the Mike Collier on her docket for the day was her Mike Collier—the one man in the whole wide world she never, ever wanted to see again—she’d elected to tough it out instead of going upstairs and panhandling in the halls for another judge since, short of judicial hijacking, no one would do it anyway. Meaning, it was up to her to try Mike, convict him if he was guilty—she hoped he was, boy, did she hope he was—and then sentence him, the fun part! Too bad iceberg exile wasn’t an option. But on the bright side, the law book she was going to throw at him was a big one.
“Like I said, the city put a no-parking zone almost directly in front of my office, Your Honor, and the next closest place for me to park is a block away—in the paid public parking. I’m always coming and going, chasing down stories and whatever, and parking so far away is damn inconvenient. Wastes a lot of my time. Then in any bad weather, rain, snow…No way I’m going to walk that. Plus sixty bucks a month for a parking permit is ridiculous, especially when I had free parking right outside my door until two months ago, when the mayor’s cousin set up a flower shop right next to me and complained, apparently to the right people—or person—as it turned out, that my parking spot obstructed a clear view of her shop. In my opinion, we’re talking conspiracy here, especially since I ran an editorial against the mayor just a couple of weeks before that and I’m sure this no-parking thing is his way of repaying me, since my paper isn’t backing him in the next election. Good old-fashioned political harassment for choosing to exercise my right of free speech, that’s what it is.” Mike took a deep breath and grinned at Lilly. “I rest my case, Your Honor.” Then he winked.
Or did he? She wasn’t sure. She looked up at the ceiling tile, noting the pattern of yellow staining on it, then silently begged, Please don’t let that start again. But it already had—little voices, little gestures, more little voices—all things that happened, or didn’t happen, only when she was around Mike.
Twelve yellowed ceiling tiles later, without a solution to the thing she grudgingly called the thing, Lilly wrenched her attention back to Mike’s case. He was sooo cool…sooo calculated…sooo relaxed about it. Working her. That’s what he was doing. Working her, and she had to give credit where it was due. He did it brilliantly. The way he shoved his hands into his khakis—as though this was a casual meeting between two friends, not a court of law…her court of law. Smiling, grinning, winking…or not. It irritated her. He irritated her, and the only transient panacea was an effigy of Mike swinging a pickax on a rock pile. Good image; she liked it a lot. Suddenly he was shirtless and glistening with sweat—like she needed that distraction. So she made a hasty retreat back to Mike’s iceberg, since in a parka he wasn’t nearly so dangerous. Then…oh, no, not that! The parka was slipping off. Zipper sliding down, sleeve slithering off, and underneath…
Mike cleared his throat. “I said I rest my case, Your Honor.”
He didn’t have anything on under that