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  “Pam is worried about another gold digger getting her claws into you.”

  The reminder of what I had been through, what I had put the firm through, hit its mark. “She doesn’t need to worry about that happening ever again. I’ve told you a hundred times I’ve learned my lesson.”

  Another rusty-sounding chuckle made its way across the phone line. “You need a willing woman that knows how to give a man what he needs and that looks good while she’s doing it. In fact, you should find yourself one and bring her to the partners’ holiday party that will be here before you know it.”

  I grunted and forcibly turned my mind away from the image of walking into Orsen’s opulent Belcaro mansion with a pink-haired hurricane on my arm. The partners would lose their minds and not just because she was a client. McNair and Duvall had an image to upkeep, a reputation to uphold, which meant everyone that represented them was expected to look and act a certain way. On the outside, Lottie was the perfect lawyer’s wife, even though she was corrupted and the worst kind of wife on the inside. It made me cringe that I was even comparing the two women. They weren’t cut from the same cloth at all; in fact, I was pretty sure Avett came from some kind of custom textile that only existed to create her. “I’ll see what I can do. My caseload is a nightmare at the moment, so that hasn’t left a lot of time for much else.”

  “There’s always time for the right kind of woman, kid, especially after you wasted so much time on the wrong kind of woman. Pencil me in for a lunch meeting early next week. You can catch me up on what you’re working on, including the punk rocker.”

  He barked a good-bye, hanging up before I could tell him pink hair did not automatically equal someone being a punk rocker. Orsen was old school and set in his ways. He wouldn’t recognize the hair as another facet of Avett’s spirited and untamed personality. I wasn’t lying when I told her I liked it. It was different and suited her, but I was practical enough to know that it had to go, even if I disliked the idea almost as much as she did.

  The entirely unprofessional thoughts I was having where Avett was concerned also needed to take a hike. If there was a right kind of woman for what I currently needed, it absolutely wasn’t one that was an almost felon and that seemed a hundred times more comfortable in her skin than I had ever been. I needed a woman I could fuck and forget, not one that was already lingering on my mind and poking holes, without even trying, in the iron façade I had spent years hiding behind.

  CHAPTER 5

  Avett

  You look pretty, Avett.” My dad’s gruff voice startled me from where I was still trying to pin strands of pink hair into the tightly coiled bun at the back of my head.

  I should have changed it. I’d had almost three weeks to buy a box of dye, to make the pink no more, but I couldn’t do it. Every time I thought about it, every time I really contemplated the fact I might have to go to prison for an extended amount of time, the idea of going away as someone that wasn’t me, the thought of facing the judge and everyone else slotted to judge me as an imitation of myself, it made my skin crawl. Plus, every time I had a meeting with Quaid in his stuffy office, with its fancy carpet and boring furniture, the first thing he did was look at my hair, then look at me with a combination of reproach and admiration in his eyes. I liked both of those responses from him. I liked any kind of response from him. Getting him to react to me had become a personal challenge, and I was well aware I was pulling on a big, golden lion’s tail. The man was a predator, a civilized beast in a designer suit. There was more to the handsome lawyer than met the eye. I was dangerously intrigued by what kind of secrets his killer grin and steely blue gaze kept hidden.

  He never mentioned me changing my hair again, so I was secretly hoping he realized it came with the territory … one more choice I was making that might bite me in the ass, but like all my other choices, I would face the consequences of my actions. I would own being the type of person that was critically flawed and forever fucking things up. I wasn’t hiding any of that, so that meant the pink hair stayed, but I did my best to make it as subtle as possible, and I did concede to part of Quaid’s advice, deciding not to dress like a college dropout for the big day. That was why my dad was leaning in the door of the open bathroom looking at me like he hadn’t ever seen me dressed up before.

  Probably because he hadn’t.

  My family was casual to our bones. I owned one skirt that dated back to high school. I’d had to go shopping, with my dad, because I didn’t have a car or any kind of cash to buy something that was suitable for convincing a judge I would never take part in an armed robbery.

  I put my hands on the sink, looking at my dad’s dark gray eyes in the mirror. Things had been tough since I’d come home. There was a tension there, a lingering cloud that hovered over us, and I wasn’t sure how I was ever going to fix things with the most important person in my whole world. I knew a lot of his unease came from the fact my mother still wasn’t happy with me, and when she wasn’t happy Brite wasn’t happy. I didn’t know how to make things better with her either and that meant I did nothing. Doing nothing was always the action that seemed to hurt the worst and, even knowing that, I still found myself doing it over and over again.

  “Thanks, Dad. How does the hair look?” The tightly coiled bun had taken more time than I’d spent on my hair in all my twenty-two years. Generally, I let the loose and wavy strands do their own thing. I was all about no-fuss-no-muss.

  “Pretty, all of it is pretty. You can’t even see the pink from the front.” He was trying to be reassuring but I could tell he was nervous by the tense set of his broad shoulders and the downturn of his mouth within the forest of his beard.

  “Good. I’ll remember not to turn around in front of the judge. Thanks again for the classy duds.” I pulled at the front of the lacy, cream-colored, three-quarter-sleeved, knee-length dress he had actually been the one to pick out for me. It was cute and totally conservative enough when I paired it with black leggings and ankle boots. It wasn’t something that made me look like a mom or like some high-class chick I would never, ever be. It was an outfit that made me look like a twenty-two-year-old that should, theoretically, have her shit together. So that’s who I was determined to be, even if it felt like I couldn’t have my shit less together if I tried.

  “I’m happy to help you out, Sprite. Always have been.” His frown went deeper into his fuzzy face as his salt-and-pepper eyebrows slanted down over his eyes. “Your mom, too.”

  There it was. The Darcy-sized elephant in the room that had been hovering between us since he bailed me out of jail … or longer. Things had never been particularly easy between me and my mother. I blew out a breath and turned to face him. I leaned back against the sink and met his solemn gaze.

  “I don’t know what to say to her, Dad. She isn’t you. She doesn’t forgive the way you do.” When I started my downward spiral, when I went from being a simple yet defiant party girl to the girl determined to ruin everything good in her life, my mom didn’t understand and she watched me fall with little sympathy or compassion. Granted, she didn’t have the whole story but I wanted her to love me enough to forgive me and excuse me anyway. Instead, she forced enough space between the two of us that my guilt and the blame I fostered from the night I learned how tragic doing nothing could be had plenty of room to flourish and grow.

  “You have so much of your mom in you, Sprite. I think you’re both too stubborn and hardheaded to see it though. She loves you. She will always love you and support you just like I do. She had to find her way just like you did, kiddo. Darce wants more for her baby girl. She doesn’t want to see you waste your time on loser after loser like she did, and she doesn’t want you tied to a no-named bar. We both know you have so much more to offer. Those aren’t bad things to want for your kid.”

  I sighed and stiffened my spine. “I’ll convince Mom I’m innocent and have learned my lesson after I convince a judge. Deal?” He looked at me until I squirmed under his intent gaze. “Dad, I pro
mise I will figure out a way to work on things with Mom. I’ve let things go for far too long and it’s gotten me nowhere good.”

  Finally, after a beat, a grin that transformed him from surly, grumpy biker badass into a warm, kind, and much more Santa-esque badass broke across his face. “I know you will, Sprite. I have faith in you … always. And you might’ve let go but we’re your parents. We’ve been holding on tight since the beginning.”

  I pushed off the sink and nervously tugged at the hem of my dress. “Thanks, Dad. Let’s do this thing.” Quaid seemed so sure the charges would be dismissed, but he never forgot to remind me that we could take the plea deal, that ninety days in jail was a much better option than three years. I was nervous, but there was something about Quaid Jackson, something about the way he handled himself, something about the way he handled me, that gave me unbridled confidence that the situation would go the way he guided it. I honestly believed the man would get the charges dropped, and if he didn’t, then I had full confidence he could unleash that dangerous grin and wicked charm of his on a jury and bend them to his will.

  My dad moved out of the doorway and followed me down the hall towards the front of the house. I grabbed my purse and was pulling the front door open when my father’s heavy hand landed on my shoulder. I turned to look at him in question and was relieved to see his grin was still in place.

  “Avett, you need to understand how I got to a place where I learned how to forgive. The main reason I can hang in there until someone that’s lost finds their way is because I was a man, not too long ago, that needed that kind of forgiveness and needed someone to show me the way. All the choices we make, good and bad, have a lesson in them. I think it’s time you quit letting those lessons go over your head, Sprite.”

  The lessons weren’t going over my head. They were hitting me right in the heart, right in my very soul, and I deserved all of them. Those lessons reminded me every single day what kind of person I was; they reinforced the fact that when you were a bad person, bad things happened to you, and I knew I deserved them all. Every lesson I learned, I held close and let prick at me with sharp barbs over and over again.

  My dad pulled the door closed behind him and we walked down the front steps of the beautifully restored two-story Italianate brick home that my dad had lived in since his split with my mom. It was home, as much as the bar had always been, and I loved it and the Curtis Park neighborhood it was located in. We were walking towards his red truck when he stopped by my side and waved at someone across the street. I squinted against the sun to see who he was waving at, but all I got was a flash of rust-colored hair and an arm full of brightly inked tattoos as it disappeared into the driver’s side of a beautiful old Cadillac. The guy moved quick and his car sounded loud and mean when he started it. That wasn’t a show Caddy; that was a Caddy with some balls and well-maintained guts.

  “Who was that?” Dad pulled open my door for me because even the most badass of badasses treated his daughter like a lady, and wouldn’t accept anything less from any man in her life.

  My dad lumbered up behind the wheel, slapping on a pair of mirrored sunglasses. Maybe Quaid should have given my old man a list of dos and don’ts for proper court wear instead of me. At least he had left the Harley T-shirt at home and had opted for a plain black one in its place. That was totally how Brite Walker dressed to impress. I chuckled a little at the thought as he backed out of the driveway.

  “New neighbor. The boys call him Wheeler. He runs a garage down in the warehouse district. Boy has skills when it comes to anything with a motor in it. I keep telling him if he comes across a 1959 Pan-Head, I’ll buy it no questions asked and have him rebuild it for me. He’s a good kid, and my boys like him.”

  I lifted an eyebrow. “And he just happened to end up in the house across the street from you?”

  My dad chuckled and turned to look at me, but all I could see was my own pale and pinched expression reflected back at me. Definitely not a chick that had her shit together. I wasn’t going to fool anyone.

  “The boys may have mentioned he was looking and I may have mentioned there was a for-sale sign in the neighborhood. Kid’s got himself a girl and recently got engaged. He’s trying to settle down and do right. You know how I feel about a good man trying to do right.” He paused and then muttered under his breath so quietly I almost didn’t hear, “Even if he’s doing right by the wrong girl.”

  “You don’t like his girlfriend?”

  My dad shrugged and turned back to the road. In Brite Walker speak, that meant he more than didn’t care for her.

  “The kid works hard, has raw talent when it comes to what he does. The girl seems happy to sit around and take him for a ride. She’s been around a long time and I think the kid doesn’t know anything else. Reminds me of my first wife, and my first marriage, and we both know how that turned out.”

  It turned out bad … really bad. Dad had cheated with my mom, knocked her up with me, and left the first wife without a backward glance, even though they had been together since high school and she had waited for him for years while he was overseas with the Marines. He said, time and time again, that he regretted the way things ended with his first wife—she deserved better from him—but he got me out of the deal. I was his great story from that bad decision and I knew he wouldn’t trade me for anything in the world.

  I chuckled again and looked out the window as we got closer and closer to downtown and to the courthouse. “It’s not your job to save every single, confused, twenty-something in Denver, Dad.”

  He chuckled as well, and wheeled the big truck into a paid parking lot because there was no way to parallel-park the beast on the busy downtown streets. Even badasses hated parallel parking on crowded city streets.

  “I’m retired, Avett. What else am I going to do with my time?” I guess he had a point, and as he came around to open my door, I hooked my hand in the elbow he offered, and took a deep breath. My nerves kicked into high gear and my tummy started to tie itself into knots.

  “I hope they appreciate you and what you do for them.”

  He patted my hand where it had gone clammy against his tattooed arm. “Doesn’t matter if they do, or don’t. I appreciate them and what they do for me.” And there it was. He was giant-sized, he took no shit from anyone, he was grizzly, and he was gruff, but there would never be a better heart than the one that beat strong and true inside of Brite Walker. He was amazing through and through. I knew I had never done a single thing in my short life to deserve him, but I was selfish and greedy enough to know I would never, ever let him go. Even if I knew I would never feel entirely worthy of his loyalty and devotion to me.

  His voice rumbled over my head and distracted me from my dark musings. “You ready to do this, Sprite?”

  I took a deep breath as he pulled open the door and guided me towards the security line. “As ready as I’ll ever be, I guess.”

  We didn’t say anything else as we passed through the security checkpoint, the officers giving my dad pointed looks and predictably pulling him aside to run the wand over him before they let us go. We found the tiny room Quaid had instructed us to meet him in outside of the actual courtroom. When we walked in, he was already there tapping away on his phone and looking as sharp and as pulled together as ever.

  Today’s suit was black and the shirt under was a charcoal gray. The silk tie knotted at his tanned throat was a pretty royal blue and all of it made him look good enough to eat. The man wore a suit well, but I was curious to know what he looked like out of it. There had been one picture Google was generous enough to share with me of him in his Army fatigues, but he was so young then—a boy, really, and not the tall, imposing man that stood before me now. I wondered if he ever relaxed, if he took the suit off when he got home and rocked a pair of tattered sweats and a stained T-shirt. I doubted it, but I would bet good money that he looked as good in casual wear as he did in a thousand-dollar suit.

  His eyes roved over me and he gave a quick nod
before reaching out to shake my dad’s offered hand.

  “I see you took my advice to heart, Ms. Walker. This will do, this will do nicely.” I rolled my eyes at him when he called me Ms. Walker. For weeks now, I’d been Avett when we were alone in his office, and he had been Quaid. The formal title was a reminder that it was showtime and I better get my act together for the powers that be.

  “Thanks. Dad picked it out and I spent forever trying to hide the pink hair. This is the best I could do.” I turned my head slightly to the side so he could see the bun, and if I hadn’t been standing right in front of him, I would’ve missed the barely there breath of what seemed like relief that whispered out of him.

  “The work paid off.”

  I nodded my head a little and met his chilly gaze with one of my own. “Whatever happens today is happening to me. I’m going to face the music, own up to the fact I messed up, picked the wrong person. Again. And I’m going to do that as me. Me, who has pink hair and won’t be caught dead in a power suit.” I let my eyes roll over his long and elegant frame draped in material that cost more than my dad’s monthly mortgage payment. “No offense.”

  Like he would take any. No man on Earth had ever looked as good in a suit as this one did. I mean, I was pretty sure that was an actual fact.

  His eyebrows lifted a hint as the edge of his mouth dipped because he wasn’t going to let himself smile at me. “None taken and you don’t need a power suit. What you’re working with is fine and more importantly you seem comfortable. That comes across as earnest and honest. We don’t need you in anything that would make you fidgety and uneasy. That behavior comes across as anxious and guilty.”