So they’d become friends over textbooks and in oral arguments. He’d mentored her, having already taken the classes she was in, and she’d challenged him with her sharp mind.
A lovely woman barely emerging from adolescence, with dark hair, a pleasant figure and a face that had been pretty but painfully young. Of one thing he had been sure, though: Amber would rise to the top. He wouldn’t have been surprised if she reached the Supreme Court.
But now she was in trouble?
He poured himself another glass of wine, carried it to his easy chair and prepared to listen.
It didn’t take an hour, either. Amber was indeed in a mess.
“I think this is a bad idea,” Earl Carter told his son, not for the first time in the last month.
“Amber needs a place to get her feet under her, Dad,” Wyatt answered. The two men were sharing a beer at the kitchen table as they had so many times over the years.
“People will talk, a strange woman moving in with you.”
“Dad, it’s the twenty-first century.”
Earl snorted. “Not in a lot of places in this county it isn’t, Wyatt. Dang, you’re a judge! Decorum and all that.”
Wyatt hid a smile behind his beer bottle. Clearly Earl was one of those who hadn’t quite come into the new century. But while he never would have admitted it to his father, he wasn’t so sure about having Amber here, either.
First off, she was a city gal, and Conard City was barely a blip on the map. Secondly, they’d been friends in law school over ten years ago. A bunch of keeping-in-touch emails and an occasional phone call didn’t mean he really knew the woman she had become. Nor could he know how all those years at huge law firms might have changed her.
“Maybe I should move back in,” Earl said. He’d moved out after Wyatt had come back from his years with the judge advocate general’s office, because—as he’d said at the time—he was tired of keeping up the huge old family house, and besides, what woman would want to marry a man who was living with his father?
“I don’t need a chaperone,” Wyatt said now.
“Maybe you need a headshrinker.” Earl leaned back, his comfortable belly stretching his white shirt. He’d come directly from his law office, where he still wore a suit every single day. A Western-cut suit with a bolo tie, to be sure, but still a suit. He often evinced disapproval of his son’s penchant for wearing jeans beneath his judicial robe. Of course, he voiced plenty of disapproval for Wyatt’s motorcycle, too. “Look, son, it hasn’t been that long since you broke it off with Ellie.”
“What does Ellie have to do with it? That was over a year ago, and you know why I broke it off.” Wyatt shifted irritably. “Any woman who expects me to dismiss charges against her cousin is a woman I don’t want in my life.”
“I get it. You were right, not saying you weren’t. But that isn’t the story she put around.”
“So? What does that have to do with now?”
“Ellie’s gonna make trouble, mark my words. Moving a big-city woman in with you?”
“Temporarily, Dad,” Wyatt said with as much patience as he could muster. “It’s nobody’s business.”
“You know better than that. You have an election coming up.”
“Retention only. And if folks around here don’t want me to be the judge anymore, you’ll have a partner in that law practice again.”
Earl sighed. “You never set your sights high enough.”
Wyatt almost laughed. “I remember a time you thought that the practice of Carter and Carter was as high I needed to set my sights.”
“But now you’re a judge! You could become a district judge, maybe even go to the state supreme court.”
Wyatt experienced a jolt of shock. He had never dreamed that his father envisioned that kind of future for him. It had been surprise enough when he’d been nominated to the bench as a circuit judge. Now this comment from a man whose highest ambition had once been to see his son’s name on the shingle beneath his. “What got into you, Dad?”
Earl shrugged and took another swig of beer. “After you were nominated for the bench, I started wondering if I was holding you back.” Then he winked. “Not that I want to see you taking off again. Hard enough when you were at school and in the military.”
Holding the icy bottle in one hand, listening to the autumn wind picking up outside, Wyatt wondered if his dad was serious. He himself cherished no great ambitions that would carry him far away. He’d done that already, seen his share of the world with the JAG, and had decided things were just dandy here at home among people he’d known all his life. If he wanted adventure, that was what vacations were for. As it was, the daily parade of humanity that passed before his bench was entertaining and challenging enough, as was his work with youthful offenders.
“You should be thinking of these things,” Earl said, returning to the whole point of his visit.
“I don’t see a political future for myself, Dad. It’s enough I can get away for a couple of weeks, that I can go hunting for a weekend or two in the fall...”
Earl snorted. “And when was the last time you brought home any meat?”
Wyatt stifled a grin. “Hunting is good for that image you’re worried about. Someone from the city council or county commission asks me every year. I go to the dang lodge, drink with the boys, and I can’t help it if I’m a lousy shot.”
“You weren’t always,” Earl retorted, but a twinkle came to his eyes. Then his expression darkened again. “I know you’re not going to listen to me. When’s that woman arriving?”
“Amber is arriving some time this evening. Hang around and you’ll meet her.”
“And you’re throwing a party for her, too?”
Wyatt smothered a sigh. He knew perfectly well his father wasn’t this dense and that Earl was giving him a hard time. “Not a party, Dad. I’m having a few people over next weekend so she can meet some other women. I’m not around much, and maybe she can find some friends while she’s here.”
“Hmm.” Earl drained the rest of his beer and tossed the bottle in the trash. “I think I’ll head on back to my place. Maybe give Alma a call.”
Alma was his father’s latest interest, a woman in her midfifties with a warm smile and a nicely plump figure. Wyatt often thought that Earl hadn’t moved out of the family house so that his son could date, but rather so Wyatt wouldn’t cramp his father’s style. Wyatt’s mother had been gone for nearly thirty years, but Earl had never remarried. He had, however, enjoyed a series of relationships.
Apparently, he wasn’t worried about appearances for himself. Wyatt just shook his head as his father grabbed his coat and left. Earl was no fool, obviously, but the way he’d been talking tonight? Wyatt wondered what was really behind it.
A short while later he stood at the front window, the large living room behind him, the lights out so he could see. Wind was ripping the last autumn leaves from the trees and sweeping them down the street.
No, Earl was no fool. So maybe he was right that having Amber here was a mistake. The thing was, Wyatt had never been one to turn away someone in need. Far from it. He always had an overwhelming desire to help.
Mistake or no mistake, Amber was going to have a place