Passion's Hope (The Doms of Passion Lake Book 3) (35 page)

He disappeared into the courtroom. Nik and Jay came up behind Charlie, each placing a hand on one of her shoulders and Mike Conover introduced Alicia to everyone in the group. Within just a few minutes, the bailiff came out and called for Karen Lunsford.

There were benches against the wall, but no one sat. Alicia paced, Charlie just stood with Nik’s arms around her shoulders from behind, rocking her gently back and forth, his cheek pressed against her hair. His murmured words of comfort soothed her. When Karen emerged and Alicia’s name was called, Charlie smiled at her and gave her a thumbs up.

Sarah approached her. “You okay, Charlie?” At Charlie’s nod, she continued. “Just answer the prosecutor’s questions, exactly like you did at the deposition. I know you’ll do fine.”

“Thanks, Sarah. Your support means so much to me.”

“It’s our pleasure, Charlie,” Jesse said, coming up behind his wife. “Adam would be here, too, but he’s in D.C. at the moment, meeting with a prospective new client.”

“You guys are all so supportive of each other,” Charlie remarked on a note of wonder. “I never knew friends could be like that.”

“These guys were all SEALs together for a lot of years,” Sarah said. “They’re more than friends. They’re brothers. They would do anything to help one another, and they trust each other with their lives.” She smiled. “And we, as their women, are the beneficiaries of such gallantry.” Jesse put his hand on her shoulder and she reached up to cover it with hers. “They take a threat to any one of us as a direct attack on all of them. Which makes us the luckiest people on the face of the planet.” She leaned her head closer to Charlie’s but didn’t lower her voice. “Plus they’re hot.”

“Don’t forget sexy,” Jesse chimed in with an impish grin.

Sarah just shook her head. “I have to tell him that at least twice a day,” she laughed. “He’s so insecure.”

“Not insecure,” he countered, his eyes twinkling with humor. “I just like hearing it.” He flexed his bicep. “Makes me feel all manly ‘n’ stuff.”

“Insecure,” Sarah murmured to Charlie, hiding her mouth behind her raised hand.

They all laughed.

Twenty minutes later, Alicia Corwin emerged, her eyes instantly seeking Charlie’s. She looked a bit pale, but otherwise unshaken.

“How’d it go?” Charlie asked, taking her hand.

“Okay. I—”

“The court calls Charlotte Fielding,” the bailiff intoned from the open doorway.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Charlie’s heart lurched. Sarah gave her arm a reassuring pat. Nik and Jay bent to give her a kiss on each cheek.

“Go get ‘em, Tiger,” Jay said, making her smile.

Alicia smiled and squeezed Charlie’s hand as she started toward the door. “You’ll do fine.”

Charlie walked into the courtroom and down the center aisle, surprised at how small the room was and how few people there were in there. Besides the judge, a clerk, the court reporter and Raymond Baines, there were only five others, three men and two women. The Grand Jurors, she presumed, although she’d expected there to be more—like maybe a couple of dozen.

The clerk swore her in and she took her seat in the docket, folding her hands in her lap to keep from fidgeting. She stated and spelled her name and waited for Attorney Baines to look up from consulting his notes and ask her the first question.

Finally, he looked up at her and smiled. “Good morning, Miss Fielding. How are you today?”

“Fine, thank you.” She relaxed back into the comfortable chair.

“Could you please tell the Jury how you met Perry Bradford?” he asked and she began describing the series of events that had led to her three-week ordeal of rape, torture, and captivity at Perry’s hands. She held nothing back and found herself weeping more than once, each time shaking her head when Raymond Baines handed her a tissue and asked if she needed a break.

The only time she nearly lost it was when one of the female jurors, an elderly, white-haired woman who had spent nearly the entirety of Charlie’s testimony brushing imaginary crumbs off her ample bosom or inspecting her fingernails, raised her hand and asked, “Why didn’t you try to escape?”

Charlie’s entire body stiffened in disbelief. The question floored her. Where had this woman been for the past hour as she’d been describing her entire ordeal? She looked at Raymond Baines, who looked as frustrated as she felt about the woman’s complete air of indifference. Evidently the forty-dollar
per diem
she was receiving for her service wasn’t enough to make her actually pay attention.

“Well, ma’am,” she said slowly, hanging onto her temper with both hands, “as I have said repeatedly he kept me restrained the entire time I was there, either with handcuffs, ropes, or chains. I also said, several times, that he always locked the box I was forced to sleep in at night before he rolled it under the bed. In addition, I’m pretty sure that every time I mentioned being forced to go naked out into the back yard to wash out the tub full of my feces, I also happened to mention that I was cuffed and chained to a post and could go no farther than eight feet in any one direction. And, if you will recall, I
did
escape. I described in great detail exactly
how
I escaped. From the hospital. In the dead of night. That was the first chance I’d had since walking into his house three weeks earlier. If I had made even the tiniest attempt to escape before that night at the hospital, not only would I not have succeeded, but I would have been punished so severely, I probably wouldn’t be alive today.” Somehow Charlie managed to smile at the woman. “I hope that answers your question.”

The woman nodded, looking a little nonplussed. “Yes. Thank you.”

Raymond Baines then asked Charlie to describe the injuries that Bradford had inflicted upon her during her captivity. He handed her the enlarged photos he’d obtained from her medical file at the hospital. The photos the nurse had taken. “Do these photos accurately reflect your condition the night Perry Bradford brought you to the Emergency Room at Virginia Medical Center?”

“Yes.”

Baines laid them out before the judge. “Permission to publish these to the jury, Your Honor?”

“Permission granted.”

While the jurors were looking at the enlarged photos, he turned back to Charlie. “Did you ask for any of that to be done to you?”

“No, I did not.”

He then asked her to describe the details of her encounter with Bradford at Club Risqué.

“Is that how you sustained that bruise on your cheek?”

“Yes. He slapped me. He also choked me.”

‘Thank you, Miss Fielding. That will be all.”

The judge thanked Charlie and told her she could step down. She walked back through the courtroom in a daze, feeling the stares of the jurors following her out the door.

She stepped out into the hallway straight into Nik’s arms and burst into tears.

“Hush,
malyutka
, hush. I’ve got you. Everything’s okay. Nothing can harm you.” He kissed her and folded his arms around her, holding her close while she buried her face against his chest, her body shaking with silent sobs.

“What is it, baby?” Jay asked. “What happened in there?” He hovered anxiously beside her, patting her shoulder, rubbing her back, desperate to give her as much comfort as he could. He hated seeing her so upset. It made him want to strangle someone, preferably Perry Bradford. And the sooner, the better.

The bailiff called for Alex McKay, who stopped beside her on his way into the courtroom. “Don’t worry, Charlie.” He grinned. “By the time I get done testifying, Bradford will be toast. He’ll spend the rest of his life in prison.”

She sniffled. “Thanks, Alex. I think I needed to hear that.”

Sarah and Jesse joined them. When she finally was able to tell them what the woman had said, they were all just as flabbergasted as Charlie had been. And for some reason that went a long way toward cheering Charlie up. She took Sarah’s extended hand, then looked around. Mike Conover, Karen Lunsford, and Alicia Corwin rejoined the group.

Alex emerged from the courtroom less than fifteen minutes later, followed by a beaming Raymond Baines, who threw his arms around Charlie in a quick hug. “You did great, Charlie. You didn’t let that woman’s stupidity throw you. You were very patient with her. She’s been inattentive on other cases I’ve presented. Thank God her term is up at the end of the week.”

“How long, do you think, before you get a true bill?” Sarah asked.

“I’m expecting it any minute, actually. They were already discussing it when I left.”

Not five minutes later, a buzzer sounded and a red light flashed above the courtroom door. The bailiff appeared with a folded piece of paper, which he handed to Raymond Baines. He unfolded it and grinned. “We have a true bill. Chief, I believe the next move is yours.”

Grinning, Mike Conover pulled out his cell phone, barked “Do it!” to whoever answered, and thumbed it off. “They’ve had him under surveillance all morning. They’re on their way up to his office to arrest him right now.”

“I’ll present the case for arraignment myself,” Raymond Baines said. “I guarantee he won’t be granted bail. Not this time. Not with a Solicitation of Murder charge against him. That’s a Class A felony, good for forty years, max. Plus, we have him on video not only hiring Alex to commit the murder, but accepting the photos and wiring the rest of the money into Alex’s account as proof that Alex had actually completed the task. With any luck, he’ll die in prison.” He shook everyone’s hand. “I’ll let you know as soon as the trial date is set.”

Chief Conover and the two women also said good-bye and left, leaving Nik, Jay, Charlie, Jesse, Sarah, Art Portman, and Alex McKay.

“I made reservations for lunch at Chez Foushee,” Nik announced. “Who’ll join us?”

“We’ll go with you,” Jesse said, indicating himself and Sarah. “Our car’s over a block away, so we’ll meet you at the restaurant. C’mon, sugar.” He put his arm around Sarah’s waist.

“Sorry,” Alex said with a grimace, “I have reports to write. That’s the worst part of police work, the damned reports.” He picked up Charlie’s hand, sandwiching it between both of his beefy ones. “And just FYI, the FBI is now investigating Bradford for possible securities fraud. His troubles are just beginning.”

“Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy,” Charlie murmured.

“Exactly. So I’ll see you at the trial, sweetness. In the meantime, you’re in good hands. Nik and Jay would die before they let any harm come to you.”

“They’re definitely the most wonderful men I’ve ever met,” she agreed fervently.

“I’m reasonably certain they feel the same way about you.” Alex winked. He bent and kissed her cheek. “Later,” he said and strode away.

Nik, Jay, Art, and Charlie exited the building just as Solo pulled up in the limo. Once again, Dr. Portman got into the front passenger seat. Solo drove them to the restaurant, but he refused to join them for lunch. Even when Charlie asked him, he just shook his head adamantly and got back in behind the wheel. “Call me when you’re done,” he said curtly, and drove off without a backward glance.

Just as Jesse and Sarah walked up. Sarah turned her head to follow the limousine as it disappeared down the tree-shaded street.

“Let’s go inside. “Nik said, ushering Charlie toward the front door of the restaurant. “We’re a bit early, but maybe they’ll go ahead and seat us.”

Chez Foushee was an elegant, refined, up-scale restaurant with a wide variety of entrées, sandwiches, salads, and luscious desserts. Charlie had feared she would be too nervous to eat, but was gratified to realize that she was ravenous instead.

Art Portman sat across the table from her so he could monitor her reactions in case testifying had taken more of a toll on her than she was willing to admit. But watching the easy way she interacted with the others at the table and the way she practically devoured her tarragon chicken salad, potato salad and a fresh fruit salad, he realized that she had, indeed, taken the ordeal in stride. Her strength impressed him.

For dessert she ordered the lemon butter cake, which looked like a rich, creamy cheesecake filling baked in a crust of yellow cake, garnished with crushed raspberries and dusted with powdered sugar. At the first intensely lemony bite, she closed her eyes, a positively blissful expression on her face as the confection melted away in her mouth like spun sugar.

“Oh. Migod. I have died and gone to heaven. Here, Daddy.” She scooped up another spoonful and held it up to Nik’s mouth. ‘You’ve got to try this.” She then fed a second spoonful to Jay. They both agreed that it was, indeed, heavenly.

“Sarah? Have you ever had this?”

“Many times,” she said with a laugh. “I find it’s a little like being in subspace. Only, today, I’m having a similar out-of-body experience with this Double Chocolate Mousse Torte. The praline sauce is killer. And these pecan tuiles... Mmmm.” She took a bite of the thin, crunchy, buttery cookie and closed her eyes, moaning in bliss.

When their waitress came to refill Charlie’s milk and everyone else’s coffees, Nik asked if it were possible to order an entire lemon butter cake to go.

“Oh, absolutely,” she replied. “People do it all the time. And they freeze beautifully.”

“Excellent. I’ll take two.” When Charlie sucked in her breath to protest, he just turned to her. “We’ll freeze one of them. Maybe we can get Miguel to back-engineer it so you can have some any time you want.”

“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” the waitress said. “An adaptation of our recipe was in a 2006 issue of
Richmond Magazine.
I’m sure you could look it up online.”

Nik thanked her and she disappeared back into the kitchen area.

Charlie’s hand flew to her chest and her throat thickened with unshed tears at the sweetness of his gesture. “I can’t believe you would do that for me.”

Glancing over at her as he signed the check for the entire group, Nik’s face softened. He lifted his hand, brushing her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “
Myshka
, surely you know by now that I would do
anything
for you. When you took that first bite,” his voice tightened. “The expression on your face—”He stopped, obviously wrestling with some great emotion. It took him several seconds to get himself under control. “I knew that was an expression I wanted to see again and again. So, yes, my little mouse, I would do that and more for you.”

Face dissolving in a flood of fresh tears, she turned toward him and lifted her arms around his neck. “Thank you, Daddy,” she whispered. “You’re the best Daddy a girl ever had.” And she gave him a kiss that melted them both in a lake of fire.

A kiss that would have lasted a lot longer if Jay hadn’t said in an aggrieved voice, “Hey! What am I, chopped liver? I want one of those, too.”

Laughing against Nik’s lips, Charlie let go of him and turned to place a peck on Jay’s mouth.

.“Whoa. You call that a kiss? C’mere, baby, I’ll show you a kiss.” He pulled her up off her chair and slid her onto his lap, bending her backward over his arm and kissing her with such heat, such fervor, such exuberance, she feared she would melt. Finally, he lifted his head, his arm across her back propelling her upright. Her face was flushed. She was breathless with laughter and more than a little aroused.

“Whew!” she exclaimed, fanning herself with her hand, making the others laugh. She could feel how wet she was and was profoundly grateful that they had relented that morning and let her wear underwear. Otherwise the back of her skirt would be sopping and she’d be leaving a big wet spot on Jay’s trousers. Her face reddened at the very thought. It reddened even more when she realized that his cock was a granite ridge beneath her buttocks. She sucked her bottom lip between her teeth, drawing his gaze to her lush little mouth.