She glanced up.
"Ask anybody."
"I've already asked Paris Larsen," she said.
Luke hadn't heard Paris's name since they'd broken up. "How do you know about Paris?"
"Actually, I didn't speak to her myself. A friend of yours mentioned to my investigator that you used to go out with her, so he met with her to see what she had to say."
Ava Bixby was certainly thorough. "And?"
"She told him you picked her up in a bar."
"That isn't true," he said. "We met at a restaurant."
"A restaurant better known as a bar."
"But I was there for dinner. She was sitting at the table next to mine.
And I took her out a number of times before...anything happened. That's not the same as a one-night stand. We knew each other, trusted each other, before we made love. There was a commitment involved." He shook the ice in his mocha just to hear it rattle. "Why, what did she tell your investigator about our relationship?"
Ava didn't answer. She was writing again.
"She said I was never rough with her, right?" he persisted, ducking his head to catch her eye.
Ava put her pen aside. "Actually, she said you broke her heart."
"That wasn't intentional. I was ready to end the relationship, and she 112
wasn't ready to let go. That's all. I'm sure you've been in similar situations."
"No, I haven't," she said. "I'm careful to avoid it."
He used his index finger to move the change he'd dropped on the table. "You've never broken anyone's heart?"
"Not that I know of."
Was she serious? "Have you ever been in love?"
"Not deeply," she said without a second's hesitation.
He shook his head. "Somehow that doesn't surprise me as much as it should."
She set her jaw at a stubborn angle. "You don't hand your heart to every girl you meet, do you?"
"No, but at least I know what love feels like."
"Are you sure about that, Captain?"
"Positive."
"Have
you
ever been hurt?"
"Yes. My senior year in high school, I fell hard for a girl who wound up marrying my best friend. I've never been more miserable."
It took her a moment to come up with a response to that. "You seem to have survived," she said. "But back to Kalyna."
"We were talking about Paris."
"We were done with Paris."
"Not yet. Did she or did she not admit I was never violent with her?"
He wanted an answer and he knew what that answer would be.
"Fine. If it'l allow us to move on, she said you were never violent."
There was more. Ava was holding out on him; he could tell. "What were her exact words? Your investigator asked, 'Was he ever violent with you?' And she said..."
Ms. Bixby blew out a sigh. "Never. He was an amazing lover.' Happy now?"
"I'd be happier if you believed her," he said.
"I'l take that part on faith because whether or not you were
amazing
in the sack isn't really the issue here. Just because you never hit Paris doesn't mean you've never hit anybody."
He hung an elbow over the back of his chair. "If what Paris had to say has no bearing, why'd you track her down in the first place? Her testimony 113
only counts if it's dirt?"
She frowned. "She's stil in love with you. That doesn't make her praise very reliable."
"You can talk to
any
of the women I've dated. They'l
all
tell you I'm an amazing lover." He laughed at his own joke. But she didn't even crack a smile. "What, you have no sense of humor?" he asked.
"I'm not sure that was a joke."
He splayed his hands. "I was kidding. You know I was kidding."
Her eyebrows arched.
"Forget it." He made a dismissive gesture. "I'm not a sexual predator."
"Can you back that up with more than your word and a couple of character witnesses?" she asked.
He tipped his cup to get at the ice. Ava was looking for hard evidence, but what evidence there was seemed to support Kalyna's side.
"The cabdriver who took us to her place can tell you I got into his cab alone and gave him my home address. He'l also tell you that Kalyna climbed in at the last second, of her own volition, and insisted he take us to her place instead."
"You didn't mind having your vehicle commandeered?"
He put his cup back on the table. "I was pretty preoccupied."
"Doing what?"
Their eyes met again, and this time he refused to glance away. "Use your imagination."
When the color in her cheeks heightened, he hid a smile. For all her tough talk, Ms. Bixby wasn't nearly as world-wise as she pretended. And that was good to know, because it finally gave him an advantage. "Did the cabdriver see what was going on?" she asked.
"He couldn't have missed it."
"Did he ask her to buckle up or do anything else to acknowledge the fact that he'd witnessed this behavior?"
"No. But I could feel him watching us in the rearview mirror. That's why I tried to convince her to back off until we got to her apartment."
Ava asked him for the name of the cab company and the approximate time and wrote it down, but he got the impression she could easily have remembered that information. She was using her pen and paper to regain 114
her bearings. The conversation, and the visual images it aroused, was affecting her more than she wanted.
"You asked her to stop but she couldn't wait?" she said when she looked up.
He nearly cracked another joke about his sex appeal. She already thought he was arrogant, which tempted him to play it up. But he knew it wasn't in his best interests to make himself look bad. So he overrode the impulse by getting far more specific than he would have otherwise. If she wanted answers that wouldn't spare her sensibilities, he'd give them to her.
"She wouldn't. She was moaning and talking dirty to me, telling me she'd never touched a man who was bigger and thicker than I am. She was putting on a show."
He'd expected to see her writhe in embarrassment. But she didn't.
She was on to him. "Apparently, so are you," she said dryly.
He tried an innocent scowl. "I'm just telling you what happened."
Her gaze remained steady. "Sounds like you have an excellent memory of the night's events, including word-for-word snippets of the conversation."
The cab ride was mostly a blur. He knew Kalyna had been all over him, because he'd tried to stop her, but that was it. "Well, I'm guessing she said something like that," he told her. "But to be honest, I don't remember much more than her grinding against me while trying to stick her tongue down my throat."
Ava's face reddened, but her emotions had nothing to do with embarrassment. "You think it's funny?" she snapped. "You're accused of rape!"
The desire to laugh disappeared as the
R
word scraped through Luke's brain like broken shards of glass. He managed a careless shrug, but he was sick inside and doing everything he could not to show it, especially to this particular woman. He had no idea how his life had come to this. One bad decision--that was all it had taken. "I might as wel have a good laugh at your expense, Ms. Bixby, because you're not going to believe me no matter what I say."
This seemed to bring her up short just when she was about to let him have it. "That's a rather fatalistic view, wouldn't you say?"
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"You've been biased since I introduced myself."
"If I didn't want to hear your side, I wouldn't be sitting here."
"You're sitting here, but you're not really listening. You're merely searching for tidbits to support what you've already heard from Kalyna."
"That's not how it is," she argued. "Anyway, I can't form a fair opinion if you won't cooperate with me."
Muttering an unintelligible curse, he pressed a thumb and finger against his closed eyelids. What was wrong with him? He was panicked, frantic, furious--and when she'd provided a target, he'd gladly gone after it.
But he was only hurting himself.
"Fine," he said, sobering. "I get it. You're right. I'm sorry." He didn't give her the chance to accept or reject his apology; he immediately went on, hoping to get this over with as soon as possible. "What else do you want to know?"
If she was surprised by his sudden reversal, she didn't comment on it.
She remained very much in control--calm and cool. But then, she wasn't the one whose life hung in the balance. "What happened after you reached the apartment?"
He moved the money around some more. "We had consensual sex."
"That's it?"
"That's it."
"It couldn't be that she decided she'd had enough, but you were so turned on you wouldn't let her quit?"
"No."
"From your own description, she was extremely forward. It's natural that a man might become frustrated if she backed off. Some might even insist she deliver on the promises she'd made."
A gaggle of teenagers came in, laughing loudly and taking an occasional swat at one another. They drew Luke's eye, but his thoughts remained firmly anchored on the discussion.
"Some
might, but I didn't."
Ava added yet another packet of sugar to her tea. She'd spent more time stirring it than drinking it. That indicated how uncomfortable she felt.
But he was uncomfortable now, too. Had he really made that "big and thick"
comment? He might've laughed at himself, except he knew his behavior had been a childish reaction to her surliness.
116
"Stil , a scenario like that would be understandable," she said.
"To
you?"
he asked in surprise.
She toyed with the empty sugar packet. "To a jury."
His eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Meaning I'd get a lighter sentence."
"Exactly."
Here was the trap his attorney had warned him about. Ava was piecing the encounter together in such a way that rape sounded like a logical conclusion. "I don't care," he told her. "Maybe your version makes more sense than what really happened, but it's just that--your version."
"If you can't prove what happened, you might be better served to look at other options."
That comment convinced him Ava Bixby was every bit as dangerous as Kalyna Harter. She was trying to make him feel as if he'd have a greater chance of surviving this ordeal if he confessed. She was leading him right to the noose.
"I'd be dishonorably discharged," he said. "As far as I'm concerned, that's not a minimal sentence. And it isn't the truth. I didn't force her. Period.
As a matter of fact, I was the one who almost called it off--twice."
"Why?"
"Because she offered me..." Now that the desire to punish Ava was gone, he found himself reluctant to lay out the gritty details.
"What?" she prompted.
He swallowed a sigh. "Options I wasn't interested in."
"Like a three-way with her neighbor?"
"She told you about that?" he asked, sitting up straight.
Ava shifted her purse next to her feet. "No."
"Then how do you know?"
"I've been doing my homework."
"It appears so." His attorney hadn't gotten nearly this far. Luke had to admit that Ava Bixby was good at her job. He wanted to press her for more details, wanted her on his side, but he knew that wasn't going to happen.
She was working for the prosecution, and although he and Ava had called a truce, that was all it was--a truce.
Her knowledge of Kalyna's offer did help in one way, however. It proved to him that at least part of what had occurred could be corroborated.
117
That was something, wasn't it?
"Was there an argument when you turned down her offer of an additional partner?" she asked.
She was fishing, trying to find a reason for the bumps and bruises.
"Not at all. I got the impression she was showing off by suggesting it in the first place. That she was trying to prove how adventurous and fun she was--sort of like what she'd been doing in the cab."
"Why weren't you interested?" she asked.
For the first time, he stared at her openly, assessing the contours of her face, and found a simple yet elegant beauty there. What with the suit and that starchy bearing, he would've missed it entirely if he hadn't had reason to look closer.
She began to fidget under his regard. "What?"
"Are you asking to satisfy your own curiosity or because you think it pertains to the case in some way?"
She rolled her eyes. "Your conceit is really appalling."
"It was an honest question."
When she didn't answer, he knew. Her problem wasn't that she didn't like him. It was that she didn't
want
to like him. "I'm satisfied with one partner at a time," he explained. "It's pretty tough for sex to have any meaning beyond physical gratification if it's a party, you know?"
"Now you're saying you were investing in Kalyna emotionally?" she asked.
"Not in the way you think. But...yeah, I was interested in connecting with someone. I was upset, didn't want to be alone."
Seemingly eager to lead the conversation into safer territory, she clasped her hands in her lap. "Why were you upset?"
Phil. He grimaced at the fresh onslaught of grief and remorse. "It didn't have anything to do with her. It was something else."
"Like..."
He glared into his cup. "I'd just gotten word that my best friend was kil ed in Iraq." Embarrassed by the cracking of his voice, he scowled and forced himself to continue as his stoic father would. "We went to high school together."
"In Ogden, Utah."
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Shoving his cup away, he rested his elbows on the table. "Evidently, you've contacted people besides Paris."
"My investigator has, yes."
Had he spoken to Marissa? Could she tell him how Marissa was doing? Luke had thought about calling her over the past few weeks, but couldn't let himself. He was in too big a mess, for one thing. And it felt too disloyal to Phil to contact her now. "Is that why you called me?"
"Excuse me?"
"You've studied my background, had your investigator talk to my friends. You know something like this is out of character."