LOVING THE HEAD MAN (11 page)

       Bree stared at him.

       “Yes, you did,” he answered his own question.  “You didn’t think he’d do it, did you?”

       Bree frowned.  “Do what?”

       “Pass the selection authority over to me.  Give me the power to make the ultimate decision.  You thought you’d sleep with him, and you’d have it in the bag.”

       Bree wondered if it was possible.  Would Robert tell Alan about that night?  “Did he tell you that?” she asked Alan, careful not to sound alarmed.

       “Of course he didn’t tell me that, you idiot!  Why would Robert Colgate ever tell me anything about his personal life?  I’m just one of his minions, just like you.  Only you’re so far down on that totem pole that the bottom higher than you.”  Then he smiled.  “But it’s rich, isn’t it?  I mean, I’ve been trying to get you in my bed since you got here.  You turn me down as if I’m diseased or something.”  He said this with bitterness in his voice.  “Yet you jump into bed with Colgate--”

       “You don’t know if I jumped--”

       “Yeah, you jumped all right!  Cary doesn’t lie.”

       Bree frowned again.  “Who the hell is Cary?” 

       “The driver who picked you up, and took you to Colgate’s apartment.  Cary doesn’t lie.”

       “Because somebody picked me up and took me somewhere doesn’t mean I got in bed once I got there.”

       “Oh, you got in bed all right,” Alan insisted.  “If you were in Robert Colgate’s apartment that night, you were in his bed, too.  But the point is, now that I’m the final arbiter, you’re screwed.  You were betting on Colgate, when everybody knows he would make a lousy sugar daddy.  Didn’t you realize it too?  I mean, he doesn’t do the young thing, you see.  You’re too
  young
for him.  And none of his women look anything like you, not a thing, and every one of them would run circles around everything about you.” 

       Then he laughed.  “You lost your bet, Bree.  You should have slept with me.  Still can if you’re so inclined,” he added, looking down the length of her.  “But you lost.  You slept with the wrong man.”

       Alan laughed out loud as he grabbed his briefcase and left.  Bree just stood there.  She didn’t sleep with Robert to gain some advantage.  She, in fact, always assumed it would be bad for her career if she slept with him.  But Alan was certain that was exactly what she had done. 

       She shook her head.  Wondered if he was right, if everybody was right, and she was just as bad as they claimed.  Maybe she was in denial.  Maybe she wanted to be at Colgate so bad that she was willing to do anything, just as Alan had said.  Maybe she was diluting herself into believing she slept with Robert simply because she liked him, and wanted to, and her career had nothing to do with it.

       She didn’t know.  She thought she did earlier, before everything went crazy, but now she didn’t know.  Then she dismissed all thoughts of it.  Because what could she do about it now?  She just had to work even harder, that was
all.
 
And had to pray unceasingly for some kind of remarkable, out of nowhere miracle.

       The miracle, however, didn’t begin to take shape until nearly two weeks later.  Robert was back in town and was involved in yet another high profile murder case.  This one involved Mark Brokaw, a wealthy Chicago doctor accused of poisoning his patients.  Like all of Robert’s trials, it was a media circus, too.  It became such a celebrated case that Alan stopped work one day and escorted them all to the courthouse so that they could see Robert in action. 
Or, as Alan actually called it, “excellence in motion.”

       The courtroom was near-capacity.  The only reason Alan and the finalists found seats at all was because of Monty Ross’s insistence, declaring to the bailiff that they were a part of the defense team of lawyers and needed front row seats.

       Bree, like everybody else in the gallery, couldn’t take her eyes off of Robert.  Although court was not even in session yet, she stared unceasingly at him.  It had been over two months since that night and this was the first time she’d laid eyes on him again.  He stood at the defense table with his reading glasses on, his immaculately tailored suit hanging on him as if it had been stitched on, reading over a document with the ease of a man in his own element.   She had missed him.  She missed their short but sweet conversations.  She missed the way he enjoyed joking around with her about her southern background.  She also missed those wonderful, private things he had done to her now sex-starved body.

       When he walked over to where they all sat, to shake hands with Alan and talk briefly with him, she felt a pang of longing for him she had never experienced before.  Although the other female finalists tried to play off their infatuation, glancing at him on the sly as he talked with Alan, Bree couldn’t even attempt to front.  She stared at him. 
At his polished Italian shoes.
  At his perfectly pleated pants.  At the way his suit coat was open, hands on his hips, revealing that flat, ribbed stomach she remembered from that night.  She had been attracted to Robert Colgate probably from the first moment she met him.  But now it was unambiguous.  She wanted him.

       But, to her despair, he didn’t seem to want her.  For as soon as he completed his conversation with Alan, and they both laughed at some joke, he waved half-heartedly at the finalists as a group, looking more profoundly at the group of pretty girls than at Bree, and headed back to the defense table.  It was as if he was making it clear that his interest in her was over, that she had turned him down once, and there would be no second time.

       Robert, however, was doing all he could to avoid displaying any interest in Bree.  Not because he wasn’t interested, but because he had heard about the rumor mill, about how some loud mouth driver had spread the word that Bree had been to his apartment.  He had given Monty a serious cussing-out for hiring such a loudmouth, and the driver was subsequently fired, but it still stung. 

       He knew Bree was hurting, and he’d give anything to stop her pain. 
Which meant, he knew, that he had to avoid even the appearance of any favoritism.
  Although, when he first saw her sitting in this courtroom, his entire body ached for her.

       That night was an eye-opener.  He still thought about it, still woke up with an erection remembering how wonderful it felt fucking her.  He wanted her again, but he knew he couldn’t go down that road with her. 
Because she was right.
  She would have to cede too much to him, and his crazy career, and that wouldn’t be fair to her.  But he still couldn’t help how he felt.

       Bree couldn’t help her feelings, either, as she watched him work.  Every time he would cross examine witnesses, it was as if she was watching a tennis match.  Only her eyes didn’t vacillate from player to player, but remained fixed on Robert.  And once, when he was walking back toward the defense table and their eyes met, she could contain herself no longer.  She smiled grandly at him.  But he didn’t smile back, causing her heart to drop and her eyes to almost reflexively glance at Pru and Deidra, to see if they saw it, too.  By the smirks on their faces, she knew that they had. 

       After court, when the judge adjourned for the day, Alan and the finalists were escorted by Monty into one of the attorney’s rooms to await Robert.  Alan thought it would be neat if they could critique Robert’s day in court, but Bree knew that would be an exercise in futility.  Who, she thought, was going to criticize Robert Colgate? 

       Robert walked into the small room looking depleted but rejuvenated too, as if he knew he had had a good day.  And all of Bree’s colleagues pounced, praising him unabashedly, with even Alan singing his praises. 

       Robert stood back and listened to all of the accolades, but his heart kept drifting to Bree.  She’d never know it, he made it his business to avoid any eye contact with her, but she had his undivided attention.  It took all he had not to get in touch with her when he returned to Chicago.  And then the Brokaw trial started, and he was too busy.  Because whenever he was involved in a murder case, he refused to be distracted by anyone. 
Even his sweet Brianna.

        “And what about you, Miss Hudson?” Alan asked almost as a sneer, and everybody turned and looked toward the back of the pack, where Bree stood.  “Do you agree that Mr. Colgate was perfection in motion in that courtroom, making no mistakes, as your colleagues suggest?”

       Bree felt trapped as she looked at her envious colleagues and at Robert, whom she knew would respect her more if she was completely honest.  Even though she doubted if he was going to like what she was about to say.  But she said it anyway.  “Not really, no,” she said.

       Alan and the finalists could not believe their ears.  They stared at Bree as if they knew she had done it now.
   Who does she think she is
, their exasperated looks seemed to say.  Robert, however, stared at her too, only he was staring as if she had just proven why he singled her out in the first place.             

       “So you’re denying my sainthood?” he asked jokingly, although no smile was on his face. “Are you telling me that my cross examination of the prosecution witnesses wasn’t, in your estimation, perfection personified?”

       All of the others couldn’t help but smile at his choice of words. 

       Bree, however, remained serious.  “Your cross-examinations were great,” she said, attempting to ease her hammering heart, “they were withering.  But I thought you were almost too tough on that one witness.”

       “Ah.  Let me guess which one. 
The nurse’s aide?”
 

       Bree nodded. 
“Yes, sir.
  All she was there to do was to tell what she saw.  She was walking on the floor, making her rounds, when she saw Dr. Brokaw come out of one of the victim’s rooms.  I mean, he was the victim’s doctor, after all.  And she just saw what she saw.”

       “Yes,” Robert agreed, now very serious.  “But she also saw–”

       “Him carrying a syringe,” Bree said.  “I know.”

       “The syringe that could have contained the poison that allegedly killed six people, including that patient whose room she had seen him exiting.  That, wouldn’t you agree, is very damaging testimony for my client?”

       All of the other finalists agreed easily with Robert, with Alan leading the charge.  Bree, however, frowned.

       “Not necessarily,” she said.  “I mean, Mr. Brokaw is a doctor.  He was, in fact, the victim’s doctor.  Why would it be unusual for him to be coming out of his patient’s hospital room with a syringe?”

       “Because, Miss Hudson,” Deidra Dentry said as if she was talking to an ignorant child, “you’re forgetting the common sense in all of this.  Doctors usually let the nurses administer shots.”

       “And even if a doctor administers the shot himself,” Prudence Cameron added, “he wouldn’t leave the room with the syringe still in his hand, not the way she described he was holding it.  That makes no sense.  I agree with Mr. Colgate.  That aide’s testimony was extremely damaging to his client.”

       Bree could see Robert staring intensely at her, and she didn’t know if he was inwardly hoping that she’d maintain her opposition, or inwardly seething because of what he may have considered, as the others did, was her fatal misread of what had actually transpired on that witness stand.  She prayed that the latter wasn’t true, but even if it was she stayed true to herself.  “I still disagree,” she said, “that a CNA seeing a doctor come out of his patient’s room—”