The Defendant (11 page)

Slinging her handbag over her shoulder, she climbed out of the car and picked her way across the loose gravel that covered the lot, cursing the four-inch red heels she’d slipped on to complement her short, form-fitting dress. Its white cotton fabric gleamed almost iridescent blue in the dark which was broken by the fluorescent lighting interspersed throughout the car park.

Smoothing her hands down the sides of her dress, she flipped her loose hair off her face and tried to quell her nerves. It wasn’t like she was meeting Chase for a date, for heaven’s sake. She had no right being nervous. They were friends from the past. They were catching up. Nothing less, nothing more.

But, try as she might, she couldn’t get the idea that it was kind of a date out of her mind. He’d asked her to meet him for a drink. They had a history, a romantic history. They’d been much, much more than friends. Her heart took flight alongside her thoughts and no amount of self-talk would bring them to a halt.

With a sigh of acceptance, she let her spirits soar and opened her heart more than a little to all the possibilities that lay ahead. A smile widened her lips until she was grinning hard. The weight of the world and of the past month in particular lifted from her shoulders. Chase was inside, waiting for her. All of a sudden, she was overwhelmed with anticipation and hope.

* * *

Chase glanced surreptitiously at his watch and looked across to the doorway that led inside The Bullet. He’d been at the bar for the last half an hour, passing the time with the same girl he’d given the brush off a fortnight before. Her name was Lucy and she was a beauty therapist at one of the day spas in town. He’d learned she was twenty-three and had dropped out of school at sixteen. She’d never wanted to do anything more than paint pretty pictures on people’s nails. Next on her list was to get married and have babies.

She’d shared all of this in a matter of minutes in a breathy, little-girl voice he imagined she thought he’d find sexy. He didn’t. It was irritating him to the point of madness. Or maybe it was her inane chatter that was driving him crazy. He grimaced.

His foul mood had nothing to do with the annoying young thing beside him. It did however, have everything to do with what he was about to do with her. The very thought of it had him on edge.

He’d noticed the way Josie had looked her fill at the pool while she’d hidden behind her goggles. She’d all but licked her lips. Not that he minded—hell, he’d loved every minute of it—but it was further proof that the spark that had always been there would take very little to reignite.

He couldn’t let it happen.

The heavy wooden door to The Bullet swung open and Chase caught a flash of spun gold. Josie stepped into the dimness and paused, waiting for her eyes to adjust. Chase’s gut twisted inside and out, but he knew if he didn’t act now, no matter how much his heart cried out against it, he’d be leading Josie toward huge disappointment and far away from the future she desperately wanted and deserved.

Spinning around, he grabbed hold of Lucy and drew her hard against him. He covered her mouth and swallowed her gasp and kissed her for as long as he could manage. After her initial surprise, the girl melted against him. Reaching up, she held onto his head and kept his mouth on hers long after he wanted to end it.

She pressed herself against him until every inch of her was plastered along his front. His body instinctively reacted to her nearness, even as his mind rebelled. Knowing he had to see it through and make it look convincing, he cupped her ass and lifted her until she was snug against his crotch. She growled low in her throat and he inwardly winced and prayed that it would soon be over.

Surely Josie had spotted them by now?
The bar was fairly crowded, but not impossibly so. He didn’t know how much longer he could put up with Lucy’s tongue down his throat without gagging.

His answer came soon enough when a pitcher of iced water was dumped all over his head. He gasped and blinked and Lucy yelped. They both turned to stare at Josie.

“You asshole
.
How dare you
!”

Her eyes spit fire and anger suffused her cheeks. She’d never looked more beautiful. One tear, then another slid down her face and Chase was shredded with agony. He turned away, unable to bear the sight of her pain—pain he was responsible for, yet again
.

He convinced himself it was for the best and then he tried to remember why.
She wanted children, remember?
She deserved to live her dream, just not with him. That’s what had pushed him to such drastic action, to carry out such a despicable act. Even now, it was obvious how much she cared. He knew her well, and she wouldn’t react with so much hurt and anger if her feelings for him had died so many years ago.

He ought to be floating on cloud nine, knowing that she still felt something for him and he would have, if her lifelong yearning for children had disappeared, even diminished. But it hadn’t. So he wasn’t.

Chase had seen her with Daniel. He’d noticed the special way she had with him, her natural ability to offer him comfort. She loved kids. She always had. Riley had even confirmed it.

The one thing she wanted and longed for, was the one thing he could never give her, no matter how much he wished he could. It was never going to happen. The cancer had seen to that.

* * *

Josie thought she knew what devastation felt like, but what she’d felt a decade ago didn’t come close to the torture she was suffering right now.
How could he?
How could he have invited her for a drink and then have her find him locking lips with a woman who looked like she was on the prowl?

He’d known Josie was coming. They’d even agreed on a time. He also knew she was punctual.
It was almost as if he’d planned it…

She shook her head in a whirlpool of uncertainty and confusion. None of it made sense. All she knew for certain was that Chase Barrington didn’t deserve her tears. Not back then and definitely not now.

She shook her head again. If he hadn’t wanted to renew their relationship, why hadn’t he been forthcoming from the beginning and simply said so? Why invite her here tonight and rub salt in old wounds…and so callously at that?

She groaned aloud and stabbed her car key viciously into the slot. Turning it hard, she pulled the car into gear the minute the engine caught. Spinning her tires, gravel flying every which way into the night, she sped out of the parking lot. It was reckless and would probably chip the paint off someone else’s car, but at that moment, she simply didn’t care.
 

Hot tears blinded her and she angrily swiped them away. She was through crying over Detective Sergeant Chase Barrington. With grim determination, she vowed he would never hurt her again.

Thank goodness she’d almost managed to finish her report. When she was done, she’d deliver it to the prosecutor’s office herself. After all, he was the one who required it, not Chase. There would be no need for her to ever spend another minute in Chase Barrington’s company again.
 

At least, until the trial.
If
there were a trial.

All of a sudden, the stress of the past month caught up with her. Her shoulders slumped and her breath hitched in despair. Though she willed it away, a sob tightened her chest and escaped through her tightly compressed lips and then, like a dam bursting, it was quickly followed by another and another until the road in front of her was blurred from a deluge of hot tears.

No matter how much she wished it were different, there was no escaping two facts: Chase Barrington was an asshole and Daniel Logan had the capacity to stand trial.

It was clear to her that at the time of the offense, the young boy knew what he was doing was wrong. He meant to shoot the intruder and he meant for the man to die. She was convinced he’d do exactly the same thing again, given similar circumstances. Against her emotional inclinations to find a way to get him off, it was her duty to inform the court.

Chase was the officer in charge of the case. There would be no avoiding him come the trial. But that could be months away. For now, she’d keep out of his way. She’d go back to the place she’d begun to think of as home and spend some time licking her wounds. And then she’d come back stronger than ever and Chase Barrington could go to hell. She’d survived his rejection once; she knew darn well she could survive it again.

As the lights of her cottage came into view, she let her anger build. Anger was good. Anger was great. It gave her something concrete to focus on. If she spent too much time thinking about what had just happened, she’d splinter into a million pieces and she flat-out refused to allow that to happen. She’d been there once before. It wasn’t pretty.

* * *

Chase finished the bottle of scotch and stared out into the quiet night from his position on the balcony of his condo. Despite the late hour and the impressive amount of alcohol he’d consumed, his brain wouldn’t let him rest. No, tonight it played a tortuous game, replaying the scene with Josie over and over again. No matter how hard he fought to push the images into oblivion, he couldn’t escape them.

Her anger, confusion, shock and utter devastation were so clearly imprinted on his mind that no amount of alcohol would get rid of them.

And he was the one totally and utterly responsible for her pain and broken dreams.
The knowledge pierced his heart and while he would forever regret every moment of her pain at the bar, he still felt that he’d had no choice.

As soon as Josie had cleared the room, he’d disentangled himself from Lucy. She’d blinked hard. Her surprise and confusion had quickly turned to anger when he told her he was leaving. Her slap across his cheek had stung, but it was nothing less than he deserved.

He was a jerk, a cad, an utter prick. He didn’t deserve anyone’s sympathy or understanding. He deserved to be alone, unloved and unhappy. Tears burned behind his eyes.

In weak moments, his youthful dreams of a normal life haunted him. As Josie did… No, never again could he go there.

Once again, he cursed the cancer that had taken root in his cells a decade ago and forever changed his life. He’d gone from a nineteen-year-old man with the world at his feet to a boy who was scared and confused. The future he’d dreamed of with the girl that he loved had vaporized before his eyes. Instead, words such as malignancy, chemo and oncology ward became part of his everyday life.

He’d discovered the lumps in his testicles six months before Josie’s graduation. They hadn’t given him any trouble and seemed more of an anomaly than anything else. It was only during the physical drills required throughout his police training that one of them became annoying. It rubbed and chafed and was sometimes downright irritating, but it hadn’t caused him pain. That was the reason he ignored them for so long.

Away in Goulburn, at the Academy and with end-of-year exam pressure looming, his visits home had become fewer and further apart. He ached every night he spent away from her, but he didn’t have a choice. She was busy too, immersed in her final exams and he needed to get through his course. He wanted to build a future for both of them and for that, he was willing to make sacrifices.

When Josie asked him to be her date for her high school graduation, the lumps were suddenly the last thing on his mind. He spent every leisure hour planning every minute of their night. It more than lived up to his expectations.

The memory of the night he’d spent with her was burned inside his brain. The softness of her skin, the sweetness of her lips, the indescribable feeling of being buried deep inside her. He was with the woman he loved with every fiber of his being and words couldn’t come close.

He came home late, but his mother was still awake. She noticed the change in him right away. Unable to keep it to himself a moment longer, he revealed his love for Josie. After all, now that she’d finished high school, it was only a matter of time before they declared their love to the world.

It was during the conversation with his mother that he mentioned the lumps. Being a nurse at the local hospital, she immediately became alarmed. Her reaction caused the tiniest fissure of fear to creep in and wind its way into the love that filled Chase’s heart. He hadn’t wanted to think about what the lumps might mean and how they could affect his future. Their future.

His mother insisted he see a specialist and she arranged it for the very next day. Although he protested, she insisted and instead of spending promised time with Josie, he waited in a hospital for a diagnosis.

In the rush to leave the house, he’d forgotten to take his phone. All the agonizing hours he spent in clinics and he hadn’t even been able to let her know. He couldn’t find the courage to make the call from a payphone. He didn’t even tell her that he was thinking of her and praying—every minute, every second of that day.

Then finally, the doctor had called them in and he’d followed behind his mother. They’d taken seats opposite the doctor’s huge desk and Chase had waited with dread to hear the news.

“I’m very sorry, Chase…”

It was all he needed to hear. All he
could
hear. The roar in his ears had drowned out the rest of the doctor’s words. He’d caught snippets such as ‘surgery’ and ‘chemo’ and couldn’t believe they were talking about him. He was young; he was healthy. There had to be a mistake.

He couldn’t have cancer; it wasn’t possible. Cancer was for old people, or people who’d spent their lives in the sun. It wasn’t for young people like him. He’d barely had a cough or a cold during the entire nineteen years of his life.