“I’d love that,” she murmured. “It might make you feel like you’re at home. Speaking of which, where does your family live now?”
“San Diego. I was born and raised there.”
“Big family?”
“Parents, two sisters, one brother-in-law, one niece.”
“All in Southern California?”
“Yes.”
“So why aren’t you there with them?”
“I was close, in Orange County, until four months ago.”
Finally she was getting somewhere. “What on earth made you come up here?” she couldn’t help asking. “I’d normally guess one of the three biggies—romance, legal trouble or job. But you appear to be single and don’t look like the law-breaking type.”
“I am. And I’m not.”
She went over the answer in her mind, realizing he was admitting he was single—hallelujah—and an honest guy.
“Okay. So, number three. Job? I don’t mean to offend you, but it seems to me your field isn’t necessarily one that would require you to move so far away.”
He sipped his beer again, not meeting her eye. She didn’t push, sensing he was trying to reach a decision about how much to say. Finally, with a sigh, as if he realized she wasn’t going to back off and would be around long enough to wear him down if she chose to, he admitted, “I was with the district attorney’s office in L.A. until earlier this year.”
“With…wait, you mean you’re a lawyer?”
She shouldn’t have been surprised, considering she’d already seen evidence of his intelligence, his memory and his darned interrogation skills. But it was just so strange to think of a big Los Angeles attorney moving up here to work as a laborer for her grandfather.
“It’s a long story.”
She merely stared.
“I don’t want to get into it.”
“Come on, you’ve got to give me more than, I was a lawyer, quit and came up here to plant grapes.” She suddenly remembered what he’d said the night they met, about feeling cleaner digging in the dirt here than he had in his previous life. Then she thought about the kinds of cases he must have been involved in. Los Angeles was a glitzy haven to starry-eyed actors and actresses. But anyone who actually lived there knew it could be incredibly seedy. Ugly, violent, with crimes and murders happening often enough to immunize its residents to the shock of them, unless they involved a movie star.
“One crappy case too many?” she speculated.
“Yes,” he replied, staring straight into her eyes, looking a little surprised she’d understood so easily.
“I can see why you’d want to come here, then, if you needed a change. Better hard manual labor than a mental breakdown.”
A smile appeared. “I don’t know that I was near that point, but I was definitely feeling on the verge of a moral one.”
“Oh?” Now he had her really curious.
He idly rubbed the tip of his finger on the rim of his beer mug. “You might not believe it, but criminal law is one hell of a competitive place.”
“Well of course I believe it. I read John Grisham.”
“Multiply that by a hundred and you might have an idea of how brutal the atmosphere can be, especially in a place like Hollywood, with the money and the star factor added in. There’s a winner-take-all attitude, a scorepoints-on-the-other-guy mentality. It’s not about guilt or innocence, not about finding the truth, not even always about justice. More than anything it’s about winning.”
That surprised her. She’d always been one of those idealists who believed in the justice system. But it sounded like Oliver no longer did.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered, suddenly remembering some of the news coverage she’d seen last winter, about corruption uncovered in the district attorney’s office. She didn’t remember seeing Oliver’s picture, or hearing his name, but she hadn’t really been paying attention, and the timing certainly made sense. “Were you the whistleblower?”
He stared into her eyes, not looking surprised she’d remembered the story. She didn’t recall any of the details; she just knew the media had had a field day with the previous D.A., whose own employee had accused him of judicial misconduct, including hiding evidence of innocence in a high-profile murder case.
“Yeah,” he said, lifting his mug and downing his beer.
“You were involved in that case where the kid in the gang was accused of murdering the pregnant mother?”
“It was my case. I was all set to go to trial when I found proof that he hadn’t done it.”
“And your boss buried it,” she murmured, remembering more.
“Tried to.” He leaned back, dropping his napkin onto his plate. “The kid was a punk, but it was mostly swagger. Maybe the close call will make him clean up his act.” he frowned. “Or he could get worse and end up killing somebody after all.”
“But he didn’t kill that woman?”
“No, he didn’t. I’d let myself go along with some of the crap you have to do to score convictions. Did stuff I’m not proud of. But I couldn’t be a part of convicting an innocent young man of murder, no matter what he might do in the future.”
Stepping forward and doing the right thing had been noble and admirable. But it had also probably cost him his job.
“Were you blackballed?”
“Blackballed, dumped by the woman I’d been seeing, shunned by people I’d thought were friends,” he said with a harsh laugh.
“That’s awful,” she muttered, focused more on the dumping than anything else. How could any woman do that to this gorgeous, amazing man?
He went on. “I can never go back to any D.A.’s office in California, and I’m not ready to switch sides just yet.”
“Defense attorney, you mean?”
“Right. I’m too jaded, too quick to see the bad side of humanity to start defending people I automatically assume are guilty. So for now, I dig, I shovel, I fertilize, I test pH, I till, I haul, I study. And I drink wine.”
“I think that last one’s my favorite.”
This time, his laugh wasn’t angry…it was soft and genuine.
Candace sat there and let the masculine sound wash over her. She’d seen him angry and tense, seen him sexy and aroused, seen him concerned. This was the first moment, though, that she truly believed she was seeing the real man, with his guard completely down. Seeing the Oliver he had been before his world had fallen apart last fall. She liked this man. Liked him a lot.
And oh, God, did she ever wish she had met him before she’d agreed to marry her best friend.
OLIVER WASN’T CERTAIN what had caused that warm, tender look to appear in Candace’s lovely eyes, but he figured it was bad news. He liked it better—felt safer—when she was snapping at him, taunting him, even flirting with him. This softness, this sweetness, this emotion he saw in her now, was way outside of his comfort zone.
He should have kept his fat trap shut. He should never have told her anything about himself—his past, his regrets, his shame. Because now, he greatly feared, he’d opened up a window