On Thin Ice (6 page)

“Your lover is gone,” Franco had told her. “Ten thousand dollars. He could have gotten more, you know, but then, I never thought your Ben was very bright.”

Money?
she’d thought. He was saying Ben had taken a bribe? The blood drained from her face. “No. Ben loves me, I know he does. He wouldn’t do that.” But her heart beat double-time in her throat, her stomach surged with nausea. What if Franco was right?

Franco’s smug, evil smile said it all. “He took the money and ran. You’re mine now. Accept it,
cara.
We’ll be married in a few weeks.”

“I’d rather be dead,” she said, not knowing how close she would come to that exact thing.

And that last night, when Franco had come to her in a rage . . . Gabrielle shook her head hard, trying to fling the shadows away. No, she didn’t want to think of that. Couldn’t allow herself to think of what had happened—and had nearly happened—that night. It was past and buried, and she would leave it there. She could deal with Franco Sabatino, as long as she didn’t let the memories choke her.

She rose and walked to the piano. Dragging one finger across the keyboard, she wished she felt like playing. Sleep would be a long time coming. She could think about Franco and ruin or Devlin Sinclair and sex.

Sinclair won, hands down.

If her colleagues knew— She closed her eyes again and groaned. God, wouldn’t this be one for the gossip mill? Gabrielle Rousseau, so-called Queen of Sharks, reduced to panic attacks in the women’s rest room. Sid Norris would eat it up like a kid with a candy bar.

And Sinclair, she thought, moaning. What would
he
make of it? He already knew more about the intimate details of her life than she’d ever have admitted voluntarily. Lingerie addiction, panic attacks . . . No, she didn’t want him to know about this.

After giving herself a few more seconds, she went to the sink to splash cool water on her face and check her makeup for damage. Her face looked pinched, but otherwise fairly normal.

A panic attack. Not just a twinge of one, but a full-fledged, scary as hell humdinger of an attack. What was going on here? She’d overcome that particular problem years ago.

Gabrielle wiped her hand across her forehead, staring into the mirror unseeingly, remembering other times, other places. When she’d first started out in law, it had happened like clockwork. Every time before she stepped into a courtroom, she hyperventilated. After six months of carrying a paper bag in her purse and ducking into rest rooms before her court appearances, she’d finally gotten a grip on her weakness. It had taken a year or more before she felt confident enough to dispense with the bag totally. And she hadn’t had a recurrence until now.

Until she’d had to step into a courtroom and defend Franco Sabatino.

“Morning,” Devlin said to Gabrielle,
falling into step alongside her on the way to the courtroom.

“Get your jollies by loitering outside women’s rest rooms, Sinclair? I’d have thought you had better things to do.”

Same sharp tongue as the day before, he thought. “Loitering’s one of my favorite pastimes.” She was every inch the successful attorney this morning, he noticed, his gaze taking in her dark suit and her hair coiled in a neat knot at her neck, not a strand escaping. A half smile pulled at his mouth. “Still mad at me about last night? Or are you always cranky in the morning?”

“There goes that ego again,” she said. “Why would you, or for that matter, last night, have anything to do with my mood?”

Devlin studied her. One thing he knew already, Gabrielle wasn’t always what she seemed. She looked calm, collected, together. Still, he thought, staring at her profile as they walked, he didn’t doubt she’d been up half the night looking for loopholes, trying to figure a way to weaken or destroy the prosecution’s case. Planning a strategy for the best way to spring Sabatino on bail.

“I think we’ll leave the answer to that question for later,” he finally said. “When we don’t have a bail hearing.”

Unresponsive, she stepped inside the courtroom when he held the door for her. Following her, he tried to get his mind back on the law and away from her reactions to him the night before—and even more importantly, away from
his
reactions to her. Devlin had never had a problem settling down to business. It annoyed him mightily that he was having a hard time of it now. And that he suspected the reason for that was his preoccupation with a certain lady lawyer. The sooner he established that he was the one in control, the better.

A short time later the bailiff led an unsubdued Sabatino in, leaving him standing between Devlin and Gabrielle. If Devlin hadn’t been watching Gabrielle so closely, he might have missed her slight shiver as Franco greeted her with the word Devlin was already beginning to hate.

“Bellisima,”
Sabatino said to her, seemingly unperturbed by the fact that odds were better than even that his bail would be denied. Devlin hadn’t been joking when he’d told Franco that getting him bail would be no easy matter. And Claiborne, the bail judge, didn’t much care for Mafia.

Gabrielle recovered herself quickly, shooting their client a murderous look, but otherwise ignoring him as they waited for the judge.

The tension between Sabatino and Gabrielle was so thick, Devlin couldn’t have pierced it with a lance. Why was it there? It didn’t make sense. It invited him to investigate just why those two couldn’t be in the same room without throwing out sparks of electricity. And the sparks weren’t sexual attraction, at least on Gabrielle’s part. He’d bet a year’s legal fees on that. Gabrielle didn’t dislike Sabatino, she loathed him. Devlin intended to find out why.

“All rise,” the bailiff said. And the hearing began.

Subtle and haunting,
the strains of a Vivaldi violin concerto enhanced the classic ambience of The Riviera, one of Dallas’s finest French restaurants. Chic, sleek, and ruinously expensive, the voluptuous blonde seated beside Devlin blended perfectly into her surroundings.

“Darling, you never did say why you keep breaking our dates. Or why you were so late tonight, for that matter,” Angela said, her lovely mouth curving into a pout.

“No, I didn’t, did I?” Devlin agreed. He’d spent the last three days working on the Sabatino case, but he saw no need to explain himself to Angela.

“I waited at the bar forever. I swear, I had half a mind to let that nice man—” she nodded at a gray-haired, distinguished-looking man a few tables away “—buy me a drink.” She sent Devlin a reproachful glance.

Devlin’s mouth lifted at one corner. “Why didn’t you?”

Angela gave a surprised tinkle of laughter. “Are you saying it wouldn’t have bothered you?”

“You’re perfectly free to do what you want,” he told her, and shrugged. “Don’t let me stop you.” Angela’s recent surge of possessiveness was grating on his nerves. He didn’t like being crowded, especially by a woman who wasn’t even his lover. He tried to remember why he’d been so interested in Angela in the first place. Then she leaned forward, her neckline gaping open to expose her cleavage.

Now he remembered.

His gaze lifted to her face. Judging by Angela’s superior smile, she interpreted his comment to mean that he would have been bothered to see her drinking with another man. Her ego was even healthier than his, he thought.

Conversation had never been one of Angela’s talents, and tonight was no exception. While she chattered, Devlin’s thoughts drifted. The bail hearing the day before had gone better than he’d expected, and they’d gotten Sabatino out of jail with little difficulty. Replaying the hearing in his mind, he wondered again what exactly was going on between Gabrielle and Sabatino. Something was—he could feel it every time they were together. Neither one’s reaction was, in his opinion, normal or reasonable. At least for two people who claimed not to know each other. How could he go about finding out?

Of course, he didn’t know Gabrielle all that well, and his own reaction to her hadn’t been entirely . . . reasonable. Unless you considered sudden, overwhelming lust reasonable. Pondering that, he frowned. He remembered her mouth and what it had felt like opening beneath his, the softness of her breasts crushed against his chest. Reason had very little to do with it, he decided.

Angela’s hand massaged his thigh underneath the snowy white tablecloth, bringing his attention back to her. “Devlin.” She purred his name and inched closer. Her other hand curved around her wineglass, caressing it as suggestively as she was his leg. “You’re a million miles away. I bet I know what you’re thinking about.” A provocative smile played on her lips.

Staring at her, Devlin doubted it. A month ago he’d been intent on getting Angela into his bed, but lately . . . lately he wasn’t sure she was worth the effort. He hadn’t noticed before, or if he had, it hadn’t bothered him, how hard and calculating her beautiful blue eyes were. She was gorgeous, but so predictable. Utterly, boringly predictable.

“You’ve been very patient with me,” she went on. Her fingers walked higher up his leg. “I can’t tell you how I appreciate that.” Her hand inched ever upward. She murmured throatily, “Would you like to come to my place after dinner?”

Her place. Here it was, the invitation he’d been angling for. Now that she’d given it, why did the idea generate nothing but a faint boredom? Perhaps because he knew that to Angela he would merely be one more man in a procession of lovers who could gratify either her vanity, her pocketbook, or her social ambitions.

So what?
he asked himself. It was a familiar game, and given her beauty, one he should have enjoyed. Yet he found himself wishing, for a brief, unguarded moment, that something else existed. That somewhere there was a woman who wanted the man he was and not the facade he presented. Devlin nearly laughed aloud, amused at a belief he hadn’t held in over a decade, not since he was young and extremely naïve about women and life.

As for Angela, he realized, it hadn’t been a matter of patience. He’d simply lost interest. “Another time, sweetheart. I’ve got work waiting at the office.” Her astounded expression made it hard not to laugh. Clearly chagrined, she punished him by remaining silent until the check arrived. Devlin counted it a blessing.

Though it had only been an excuse, Devlin decided to stop by the office after dropping Angela off. He figured he might as well salvage something from the evening. As he walked down the hallway, he noticed a faint gleam of light shining from beneath the door to the CG&S law library. He shoved the door open and halted on the threshold. Shadows filled most of the room, but a lamp illuminated one corner where Gabrielle sat, bent over a table covered with briefs. It was midnight, the room’s silence broken only by the sound of pages turning. Obviously, she didn’t win her cases by stinting on research. He wondered what that concentration would feel like directed at him.