* * *
Hillary Bellows didn’t care how late it was. She was not at all tired, not with all the excitement coursing through her. She couldn’t stop smiling. She was going to win this time. Stone Michaelsen was not going to get his client off—like he had so many others.
She leaned back in her desk chair and thought of the stunned expression on his ridiculously handsome face during her opening argument. She’d taken him by surprise, which unsettled her a bit. How had she gotten that information if it hadn’t come from his office?
It didn’t matter, though.
She was going to win. Of course, she wouldn’t be able to celebrate the way she’d have liked—with Stone getting her off. He was so damn good-looking with his thick black hair and those deep gray eyes of his. And his body...
With his broad shoulders, big chest and arms, and heavy thighs, his body was as ridiculously perfect as his handsome face.
How could he be in such good shape? He was always trying a case, so he had to work almost as hard as she did. And she never found time to get to the gym. So how did he?
He had to lift weights a lot. A lot of weights...
Or maybe he lifted a lot of women. She wanted him to lift her—to carry her effortlessly in those big strong arms of his. To carry her off to his bedroom...
She snorted at her fantasy. That was all it was ever going to be: just a fantasy. Unfortunately, she had a lot of them about Stone Michaelsen.
She uttered a wistful sigh and reached for the candy bar that was her dinner. Or maybe dessert now, since the dinner hour had passed a while ago. She closed her eyes as the smooth dark chocolate dissolved on her tongue, teasing her taste buds with the paradox of sweet and bitterness. A little moan of pleasure slipped through her lips.
A groan echoed it.
Startled, she jumped and nearly fell out of her chair as she opened her eyes to find Stone Michaelsen leaning against the doorjamb of her office. She hadn’t left that open; she never did, but especially not after hours. But then, maybe the cleaning crew had when one of them had taken her trash earlier. She’d said they could come back and finish cleaning a little later, but she suspected they’d already left for the night since that had been a while ago.
“How the hell did you get in here?” she asked.
How had she not heard the door open? How had she not felt him watching her? Had she been that preoccupied...thinking about him?
He lifted one of his broad shoulders in a half shrug. “I’m not such a bad man that I can’t make it past security,” he said with a grin, “especially when I represented the guard’s grandson for a drug charge.”
She glared at him. “Of course you did.” And she suspected that he’d either gotten the charges reduced or tossed out.
He had no chance of getting the charges in his current case tossed out. Or reduced.
But she had no doubt that was why he was here. She leaned back in her chair and studied him. “So, let me guess... You want to talk plea deal?”
“I have a plea for you,” he said as he stepped inside her office and closed the door.
The room was already small, but now it seemed to shrink even more as he filled it. He was so damn big—over six feet of height and breadth. His thick black hair looked a little mussed now, as if he’d run his hands through it. Or maybe some woman just had. And his gray eyes, they were so intense and focused...on her.
Her pulse quickened as he approached her desk. He braced his palms on top of the files on it and leaned over, so that his face was nearly level with hers. Now her pulse raced. Was his plea for a kiss?
She was tempted to close the distance between them and press her lips to his. But she knew that wasn’t what he wanted. He wouldn’t—couldn’t—want her.
He and his law partners dated lingerie models, fashion designers, actresses and heiresses—not poorly paid, overworked assistant district attorneys like she was. But this was the career and the life she had chosen. And she was good with that, and even better that she could have him only in her fantasies. That was a hell of a lot safer than the reality of Stone Michaelsen.
Because she did not want the real Stone Michaelsen. He was arrogant, ruthless and amoral. No. She just wanted the fantasy one who didn’t speak, who only kissed and caressed her.
“Don’t you want to know my plea?” he asked.
She drew in a deep breath to bring herself to her senses. But she only breathed in his scent, which was soap, musk and something that was him alone. “For mercy?” she teased. “You have never showed me any.”
Not in court. And not in those damn press releases he had that PR firm issue for him. Curiously, there had not been one printed today. And she would have thought it would have been more important today—than any other day—for him to discredit her case.
But then, he knew he couldn’t discredit the evidence that had been sent from his own office. Why had he done that, though? It wasn’t like Stone Michaelsen to play by the rules, or even to play fair.
“You’re not my client,” he told her. “I only plead for my clients.”
He usually didn’t plea them out, though. He came up with some ridiculous defense instead. And no matter how ridiculous it was, he conned the jury into buying it.
What the hell was he going to come up with this time? She could hardly wait to find out.
She shook her head. “I’m not giving your client any mercy. No plea deals for him.” Stone had wasted his time coming to see her.
“I wouldn’t accept a plea deal for him,” Stone said. “Byron Mueller is innocent.”
She snorted. Who was living in a fantasy world now? “If you repeat the lie enough times, do you start to believe it?”
His gray eyes narrowed in a glare. Obviously, he didn’t like being called a liar. But it was what he was, what he did. And Hillary always called it like she saw it.
“No. Really. I’m curious,” she continued. “I don’t understand how defense lawyers do it.” How could they represent someone they knew was guilty?
But that apparently was not what Stone thought she was talking about, because now his gray eyes glittered with amusement. Wriggling his brows suggestively, he lowered his voice to a sexy whisper and murmured, “I could show you.”
Her heart stopped beating entirely for a moment. Was he flirting with her?
Stone Michaelsen didn’t flirt. He was too focused on winning trials—on always being the best. Was he that way in the bedroom, too?
Did he have to be the best?
It wasn’t as if she would ever find out, though. He wasn’t suggesting what she’d thought he was. No. She must have been fantasizing yet. He wasn’t even here, let alone uttering innuendos. She reached under her desk and pinched the top of her thigh. Then she tried not to flinch at the pain.
She wasn’t fantasizing. This was real. Stone Michaelsen was in her office, and he was...
Flirting.
With.
Her.
WHAT THE HELL was he doing?
Stone hadn’t come to the district attorney’s office to flirt with Hillary Bellows. He’d come to get answers from her, to find out what the hell she’d been talking about in court about