Just a Little Bit Guilty (16 page)
It was hell to sit in court and wait. Vivian forced herself to pay attention to the case in front of her, though her eyes kept straying to the double doors at the back of the room. A half hour passed. Then an hour. Finally, her head splitting with tension, she made herself stop wondering when they'd bring Jake to her.
"Detective Griswald, look at this report," she told the slack-faced man who'd testified in the case they'd just completed. She and Tom and Griswald hunched over the corner of her desk. "This isn't how you spell 'indecent.' This looks like 'indigent.' The man owns two hamburger franchises, so I doubt he's indigent." 151
Just a little Bit Guilty
by Deborah Smith
The doors banged open. Vivian looked up quickly. The undercover cops shoved Jake into her courtroom with his hands cuffed behind him.
"Vivian, is this some kinda joke?" Jake demanded loudly, as they pushed him down the aisle.
They jerked him to a stop in front of her desk, and Vivian fought to control a wince. This wasn't nearly as satisfying as she'd hoped it would be. Jake looked disheveled and upset and completely innocent. He was supposed to look guilty. She stared down at him. "You parked illegally."
"This isn't funny, Viv."
"That's tellin' her!" a spectator shouted. She brought the gavel down with a fierce
whap
. "You have a lot of explaining to do," she told Jake calmly.
"He ain't got an attorney!" a man dressed in glittering drag complained from a back row. "He don't have to say nothing!" She looked down at Jake impatiently. "Do you want an attorney?"
"I just want a chance to explain." For the first time, Vivian noticed how tired he looked, how lines scarred the corners of his eyes and imprinted his forehead.
And his hair
, she thought suddenly,
his hair looks
as if he hasn't had time to brush it for two days
.
"Take those handcuffs off him," she said abruptly.The undercovers mumbled and shuffled their feet and unlatched Jake's hand with obvious regret. Vivian nodded to them.
"Good-bye, gentlemen, and thank you." They ambled over to the side benches to sit down for the rest of the show.
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"Viv," Jake said beseechingly. "What do you think I've done?"
Vivian looked down at him with just as much torment.
"We'll talk later, if you'd like. Take your load of cow feed and your cows and go ... wherever it is you're going to go." She had to get him out of her courtroom before she burst into un-judgelike tears. "Let's have the next case," Vivian ordered gruffly. She rearranged papers with deceptive calm.
"You think you can haul me up here, embarrass me, act like I'm lower than slime on a snake's belly and then kick me out?" Jake asked.
"Good day, Mr. Coltrane, the court has nothing else to say to you at this time."
"Well, I have somethin' else to say to the court!" Vivian glanced to her right as a coterie of detectives, attorneys and uniformed officers tensed for a confrontation. They looked at her for guidance, and she settled them with a gesture of one hand.
"You have five minutes, Mr. Coltrane." She checked her wristwatch. "Starting now."
He pivoted on the heels of his work boots and strode over to face the grinning spectators. He braced his blue-jeaned legs and clasped his hands behind his back. "I'm not right sure what Her Honor is accusin' me of, but as best I can tell, she thinks I've done less than I promised her."
"You promised to keep the apartment building," Vivian said.
"How'd you find out I sold it?" he asked, twisting around to stare at her.
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"That's not important. And you're here to answer questions, not ask them."
Jake faced the crowd again, his back squared and his voice somber. "Ladies and gentlemen, can you blame a man for wantin' to make some money?"
"No!" they all chorused back.
"Well, then." He straightened proudly. "When I inherited a run-down old apartment house here in town from my Uncle Needham, I thought I'd be lucky to make beer money off it. But then I begin to hear how the places on my street are bein' bought up by folks who want to live close to the city—
folks with more money than they got sense."
"You tell 'em, man!" a drunk-and-disorderly case shouted.
"And I said to myself, 'Maybe I can make some money after all.'" Jake paused to glance back over his shoulder at her. "That maybe,'" Jake continued, "I could make a lot of money, enough money to buy nice things for my lady, enough money to give us a nice home. Now, there isn't enough money in the world to pay her back for all the happiness and hope she's brought into my life, but I thought it'd be a start." He held his hands out in supplication. "And a million dollars ain't chicken feed."
A wave of audible gasps crested in the audience.
"I wanted it all to be a surprise," Jake continued, now pacing back and forth with his head down thoughtfully. "I planned to start puttin' a new life together, and then present it to my lady. I didn't know 'til the other day whether the deal was set on the apartments. I didn't want her to be 154
Just a little Bit Guilty
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disappointed if it fell through. I tried my best to come up with somethin' that would make her happy."
"Why didn't you just tell me you're moving back to Tuna Creek?" Vivian asked numbly.
Jake stopped and looked at her silently, his face registering surprise. Then he raised his eyebrows, nodded pensively to himself, and turned to the informal jury without answering her.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I went to Tuna Creek to get my cows back. And to lease out my land there." He swung around and faced Vivian, his arms open and hands palms up. "With the lease income and the money from selling the apartments, I can afford to buy a little farm just north of here." Jake looked at her closely. "If Her Honor thinks she wouldn't mind makin' the drive into Atlanta every day." Vivian took a deep breath. "What about Roberto and the others?"
"They go where we go," Jake replied gently, "if they want to. There's plenty of work on a dairy farm, and I'll pay good wages. But if they want to stay here in the city, I'll help them find work and give them the money to get settled somewhere else. So what's your verdict, Viv?"
Blinking back tears, Vivian looked at him tenderly. "You're guilty of stealing my heart." Everyone in the courtroom groaned. She rapped her gavel. "I'm afraid I have to place you in the custody of this court. For life." Cheers rose around them as Jake bounded around her desk to kiss her.
* * * *
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"Tilt your head back, girl."
Vivian had trouble complying. She lay on her stomach, and Jake lay beside her with one long, naked leg hooked over her. He gently guided her head off the pillow, curled his head justso, and kissed her. When he finished, she kept her eyes closed and smiled at him.
"Those eyes better stay shut," he whispered firmly. One of her black brows twitched in surprise, but she pressed her lids tightly together. He trailed something up the center of her curving throat, something that was small and square and smooth.
It tickled her chin, her lips, the tip of her nose.
"Look," he murmured.
A tiny, beautifully carved wooden box sat on his open palm. "How pretty! It must have taken you forever."
"I've been workin' on it since right after I met you."
"I love it." He set it in her cupped hands, and she turned it this way and that, admiring the workmanship. He snorted. "Well,
open
it." She slowly pushed the lid up. Inside was a diamond ring. Vivian curled it and the box inside her hands, burrowed her fists to her chest, and mumbled raggedly into the pillow.
"Mine. All mine. Mine."
"Yep, the ring is yours."
She lifted her head and gazed at him adoringly. "Forget the ring. You. Mine. All mine." She hesitated. "But the engagement ring's not shabby, either." 156
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Laughing, he took her left hand and slid the ring into place.
"It's beautiful," she sighed. "
Bella
."
"Viv, you're not lookin' at the ring, you're lookin' at
me
."
"Hush up," she purred in a Tuna Creek drawl.
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Spring was lovely in the countryside north of Atlanta, and a few azaleas remained in bloom even though May was nearly over. Huge oaks surrounded the big Coltrane farmhouse, their limbs reaching curious fingers to stroke the clapboard siding and the windows of the upstairs bedrooms.
Vivian smiled and propped her bare feet on the front porch rail. The late afternoon sun peered under the sloping roof of the porch and, finding her agreeable, caressed her until she went to sleep.
Thirty minutes later, Jake crossed the grassy yard, dirty and contentedly tired from a long day's work, whistling under his breath. Chester and Phoebe stopped at the edge of the porch behind him, their wet tongues tasting the air as they were trying to figure out why he just stood there smiling at her. They snuffled his hand, and he shushed them. Hearing Andy call them from one of the cabins house hidden on the other side of a forested hill, they loped away. Andy, Fayra, Ray and Roberto had made the move to the farm comfortably.
Jake took his boots off and tiptoed up the porch steps. He bent over Vivian. "You're not getting' the beans snapped that way," he whispered in her ear. She stirred and brushed at him as if she were shooing a gnat. He smiled wickedly. "I'll let you be this time, 'cause it's Saturday, and you had a tough week at court." She made a small sound of half-awake thanks. "I love you, Tough Stuff." 158
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She grinned up at him sleepily. "Now,
that's
worth waking up to hear."
He brushed the end of her tilted nose with his knuckle. "I'll be back in a few minutes, cleaned up."
"Need help?" Vivian asked as he disappeared indoors. Far on the other side of the screen door, the phone rang. She frowned in mild dismay. "Your tired body has just gotten a reprieve from being ravished."
"Oh, but I'm a repeat offender," Jake told her, holding the door as she hurried past him. "I'll probably do somethin' that I deserve bein' ravished for later on."
"I hope so." She planted a moving kiss on his cheek then trotted toward the phone.
Another thirty minutes passed before she ambled back to the porch, where a temptingly washed Jake now sat in the big rocking chair next to hers. He mimicked her earlier position, his denim-clad legs out in front of him, his bare feet crossed on the porch rail, his hands splayed over the white cotton Tshirt that left nothing of his muscled torso to the imagination.
"That was Callender," Vivian told him excitedly. "She's doing a lot better. The divorce was final this week, and she just got a job with the San Diego municipal court. She sounded ... not thrilled, but content."
"Contentment will do," Jake said. Vivian settled beside him in the other rocker. For a moment they watched cows trail across the rolling green pasture in front of the house. The cows were gentle black and white Holsteins, and she was learning not to be afraid of 159
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them. Moo-na Lisa made a brown-and-white oddity in the herd.
Jake reached over, snaked his fingers around her rocker's arm, and nonchalantly slid Vivian and forty pounds of chair closer to him.
"Why, Pa," she preened, "I didn't know you still cared."
"Yeah, Ma, I still think you're the prettiest heifer in the barn."
Vivian tugged his T-shirt out of his jeans, slipped a hand underneath and tickled his stomach. "You say that to all the cows."
"Hold on, now." Jake stood up and pulled her up with him, then trapped her hands against his chest. "With bad behavior like that, you'll never get parole."
"Good," she answered.
And kissed him.
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