.
She was twenty-one, almost twenty-two now. She’d graduate from college in a few months. That made her, in the eyes of the world, an adult. Not to Paul, though. Never to Paul.
She had to start thinking about what she was going to do with her life after college. Law had always fascinated her. She’d been hanging around the courthouse after school, grilling one of District Attorney Blake Kemp’s assistant DAs about what it was like to practice in a courtroom. Glory Ramirez was happy to talk to her, filling her head with thoughts of working in the DA’s office.
“Blake knows how much time you spend here, on my lunch hour and after work,” Glory teased.
“Oh, no,” Sari began.
Glory held up a hand. “He doesn’t mind. There aren’t that many people blazing paths up the street to the courthouse to solicit work in the DA’s office.” She sobered. “It’s hard work, Sari, with long hours. Sometimes defendants’ families target us, because they think we’ve been unfair. Sometimes the defendants themselves try to attack us when they get out. Those instances are rare, but they do happen. Family life is hard.” She smiled gently. “I’m qualified to know that, because my husband and I have a son who’s almost four years old. Rodrigo still works for the DEA and I’m at the courthouse all hours. Sometimes we have to have the Pendletons babysit.” The Pendletons were Glory’s adoptive family. Jason’s father had been Glory, and Gracie’s, guardian.
“I don’t really think they mind,” Sari teased, because it was well-known that although Jason and Gracie Pendleton had a son and daughter of their own now, they still loved to watch their nephew. All the kids had enough toys to stock a nursery.
“Of course not,” Glory laughed. “But I’m still missing out on time with my family to do this job. I love it,” she added gently. “It’s a special thing, to help keep people safe, to make sure people who do terrible things are punished and off the streets. That’s why I do it.”
“I…would do it for that reason, as well,” Sari said, not adding that her terror of a father was one of her own motivations. He was the sort of person who should have been sitting in a jail cell, but never would, because of his wealth. “Justice shouldn’t be dealt according to who has money and who hasn’t,” she added absently.
Glory, who had some idea of Darwin Grayling’s illegal dealings, only nodded her head.
“Anyway, what about those courses you mentioned?” she asked, bringing Glory back to the present.
Glory laughed. “Okay. Here’s what you need to consider in law school…”
* * *
Sari was full of fire for the fall semester in law school, after she got her undergraduate degree. Her cumulative grades assured that she would graduate, the finals from each class notwithstanding. She already had a graduate school picked out. Law school in San Antonio.
“You’ll have to drive me, of course,” Sari told Paul with a sigh when she outlined the courses Glory had told her about. “There’s no way Daddy will ever let me drive myself. I don’t even have a driver’s license.”
He scowled. “Surely not.”
She shrugged. “He holds the purse strings, you know. Either I do it his way or I don’t do it,” she said with the complacency of a woman who’d lived such a sheltered life. “So I do it.”
“Haven’t you ever wanted to break out?” he asked suddenly.
She grinned at him across a plate of cookies, which they were sharing with cups of coffee at the small kitchen table. “You offering to help me?” she teased. “Got a helicopter and a couple of guys wearing ninja suits?”
He chuckled. “Not quite. I used to know a couple of guys like that, though, in the old days.”
“Oh, please,” she said, munching a cookie. “You aren’t old enough to be remembering ‘the old days.’”
His eyebrows rose. “You need glasses, kid. I’ve got gray hair already.”
She eyed him. He was so gorgeous. Black wavy hair, deep-set warm brown eyes, high cheekbones, chiseled mouth; he was any woman’s dream guy. “Gray hair, my left elbow.”
“No kidding. Right here.” He indicated a spot at his temple.
“Oh, that one. Sure. You’re old, all right. You’ve got one whole gray hair.”
He grinned, as she’d expected him to. “Well, maybe a few more than that. I’m like my grandfather. His hair never turned gray. He had a few silver hairs when he died, at the age of eighty.”
“Do you look like him?” she asked, sipping coffee.
“No. I look like my grandmother. Everybody else was Italian. She was tiny and Greek and she had a mouth like a mob boss.” He chuckled. “Do something wrong, and that gnarled little hand came out of nowhere to grab your ear.” He made a face.
“So that’s why your ears are so big,” she mused, looking at them.
“Hey, I was never that bad,” he argued. He glowered at her. “And my ears aren’t that big.”
“If you say so,” she said, hiding the gleam in her eyes.
“You little termagant,” he said, exasperated.
“Where do you get all those big words?” she asked.
“College.”
“Really? You never told me you went to college.”
He shrugged. “I don’t like talking about the past.”
“I noticed.”
“We could talk about your past,” he invited.
“And after those forty-five seconds, we could go back to yours,” she teased, blue eyes twinkling. “Come on, what did you study?”
“Law.” His face hardened with the memories. “Criminal law.”
She frowned. “That was before you came to work for Daddy, yes?”
She was killing him and she didn’t know it. His hand, on the thick white mug, was almost white with the pressure he was exerting. “A long time before that.”
“Then, what…”
Mandy came into the room like a chubby whirlwind. “Where did you put the ribbons I was saving to wrap the holiday cookies with?” she demanded from Sari.
“Oh, my gosh, I was working on homemade Christmas cards and I borrowed them. I’m sorry!”
“Go get them,” Mandy ordered with all the authority of a drill sergeant. “Right now!”
Sari left in a whirlwind, and Mandy turned to Paul, who was paler than normal. His hand, around the mug, was just beginning to loosen its grip.
He gave her a suspicious look.
“Sari doesn’t think,” Mandy said quietly. “She’s curious and she asks questions, because she doesn’t think.”
He didn’t admit anything. He took a deep breath. “Thanks,” he bit off.
“We all have dark memories that we never share, Mr. Paul,” she said gently. She patted his shoulder as she walked behind him. “Age diminishes the sting a bit. But you’re much too young for that just yet,” she added with a soft chuckle.
“You’re a tonic, girl.”
“I haven’t been a girl for forty years, you sweet man, but now I feel like one!”
He laughed, the pain washing away in good humor.
“There. That’s better,” she said, smiling at him. “You just keep putting one foot in front of the other, and it gets easier.”
“It’s been almost five years.”
“Thirty