The Burden of Desire Read online

  “Oh.” He waved his hand and leaned back in his chair. “Sally. You already know her, so I don’t have to tell you that she wears her heart on her sleeve.” He popped the top of the coffee she’d left for him and looked inside before taking a sip of the steaming beverage.

  So that’s what that was: wearing her heart on her sleeve. Here Ben had thought she was acting bratty and rude. “Has she been working here for long?”

  “Since the day she passed the bar.” The older man leaned back in his chair and opened the blinds behind his desk to allow some sunlight into the dark quarters. “Sweet girl and a hell of a lawyer. But when she gets upset about something... I don’t have to tell you,” he repeated, and dropped back into his seat.

  “No. You don’t.”

  Ben was all too familiar with Sally’s dramatic tendencies. In law school, she’d had near nervous breakdowns as a matter of routine before finals. She’d show up to the library in ratty jeans and an old sweatshirt, her hair unbrushed, looking as if she hadn’t slept in days. She would draw concern from their classmates with her dramatics and endless questions, and then she’d go on to earn one of the highest grades in the class. She’d routinely squandered the time and energy of those around her. He’d found it tedious.

  Jack’s chair squeaked as he shifted forward again. “Anyway, don’t worry about her. You two will be working together on the Kruger case whether she likes it or not. There’s always a slew of work to be done during trial, and Sally doesn’t need to be a hero.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Funny. She sure got upset about you.” Jack’s bushy eyebrows rose mischievously. “Is there some history I should know about?”

  Ben started. There was a history, all right, but not one their boss needed to know. Definitely not. “Like I said, we went to Columbia together. Same first year classes.” He coughed to politely signal a change in subject. “You mentioned that you had some other cases for me already.”

  “I’ve got a stack of them. We had a retirement last month and everyone’s been helping out, but as far as I’m concerned they’re yours.” His new boss slid a piece of paper with several columns across the desk. “Here’s a table of the case names and file numbers and the attorneys you should speak with about the status.”

  “Great.”

  “I’m expecting big things from you, Ben. First in your class at Columbia, followed by an impressive military record. We’re lucky to have you here. Anything you need, you just let me know.”

  “I appreciate that, sir.” He waved the list of cases and rose. “I’ll get started on these right away.”

  Ben walked along the narrow hall, taking in the gray speckled carpet worn thin down the center, and the white walls marked with odd scuffs and smears of grime. He stopped in front of his office, which was located directly across from a cluster of gray cubicles, empty except for boxes of documents piled on and around the desks. The area hummed with the sounds of distant conversations and electrical appliances, but his was the only warm body in sight. Welcome to the neighborhood, he thought ruefully.

  He stared into the hole of a room and wondered whether his office was a converted utility closet. That would explain the size. At least the window was large. He tugged at the strings of the dusty blinds, which rose with a squeal. The window may be large, but it looked out onto the back end of a bar. Working late nights meant he would likely have a front row seat to drunken brawls, which meant he’d be seeing familiar faces at bail hearings. That didn’t seem like a perk.

  He dropped his leather briefcase near his desk with a thud. The wooden top was marred by thin grooves, he noted with a frown. A large blotter and calendar would cover up those scratches and dents, and at some point he might even forget about them. He looked around again, absorbing the fact that the walls needed a fresh coat of paint and the office chairs looked as if they needed fumigation. It was a place to work, that was all. He needed this start.

  He may have grown up nearby, but Ben couldn’t say that he’d ever expected to land in a town like Bedford Hills. Returning to the area in which he’d started signified failure to him. Now that his mother’s health was declining, though, he needed to be close to her. He pressed his fingers between two slats of the dusty blinds.

  He could admit there was something appealing about the quiet of the area. Nightlife consisted of a few downtown restaurants and bars, most of which closed by midnight. The old town had remnants of its farming roots, and aside from some of the downtown core and scattered subdivisions, properties in Bedford Hills were large and houses far apart. He could leave work and slip away into silence and solitude. He’d been raised a few towns away, but no one here knew him. He planned to keep it that way.

  Except for Sally. She’d known him once, the old Ben, before he’d gotten his life together. He’d heard that she was working as a prosecutor, but he hadn’t realized she was stationed here. That made sense. If he remembered correctly, her family lived in the area, too.

  He glanced around again. The office was claustrophobic, the view dingy. The desk was probably older than he was. Back when he was working on Wall Street, he’d had only the best of everything, and now he didn’t even have an administrative assistant. What had he been thinking, coming here? He’d never get used to this place.

  He didn’t plan to stay for long.

  * * *

  She released her breath when she entered the threshold to her office. Her sanctuary. Sally loved everything about the space, from the onyx vase she’d set on the table in the corner and filled with fresh flowers each Monday, to the framed watercolors depicting the seasons in Bedford Hills and painted by a local artist, to the lavender cashmere pashmina scarf that she draped on the back of her chair in case the ventilation went berserk, as it often did. Her space was warm and filled with the things she loved.

  A shiver darted down her spine. She was feeling angry, and that wasn’t healthy. Her palm floated unconsciously to her abdomen, resting protectively over the spot where the baby was growing. She’d read that morning that it was the size of a poppy seed. Just a little ball of cells, really, and she couldn’t help but already feel the need to protect it from everything hurtful in the world. She’d been eating healthy and thinking positive thoughts, because positive thoughts bring positive results. At least that’s what the Life Coach podcast taught. She’d been listening to the series during her commute for a few weeks now. Today’s message had been about making peace with failure. As if they’d known I would walk into work and see failure eyeing me smugly.

  “Sally.”

  She groaned and spun to see Ben standing in the doorway. All the beauty and positive thinking in the world couldn’t stop her blood pressure from spiking at that moment. She didn’t bother to force a smile. “Can I help you?”

  She observed his gaze sweeping across her office, her space, her things. He was appraising her. She studied him, trying to get a sense of his ruling, but his face remained inscrutable and he didn’t comment. “I just wanted to tell you that there are no hard feelings.”

  The statement turned painfully in her chest. This guy had some nerve. She removed her trench coat with methodical deliberation and draped it across one of the chairs at the little conference table she’d set up in the corner. “I’m not sure what you’re referring to.”

  He wasn’t rattled. Cool Ben had the gall to never appear rattled. “Don’t play coy. It doesn’t work with me. We’re colleagues now. I’m suggesting that we try to be civil, even if we can’t stand the sight of each other.”

  She gripped her herbal tea, white knuckled. At another time, she might have calmly removed the cover and hurled the beverage at his glaringly white shirt and dull blue tie. But not today, because today she was above that. “It seems like you’re under the impression I spend time thinking about you. Would it make you feel better to know that even if I tried, I couldn’t muster enough i
nterest to hate the sight of you?”

  “You’re funny, you know that?”

  He stepped into her office and walked toward her purposefully, his gaze locked on hers, the beginning of a smile curving his lips. She watched him, alarm sounding across her body, her muscles frozen. He reached her desk and pressed his large hands down, leaning forward until he intruded upon her space, caused her to lean away. “We both know you care. At least enough to hate me as much as you do.”

  He reached forward with one hand and pretended to pick a piece of lint off her Valentino dress. Then he faked considering it before pretending to flick it away. Sally’s blood pounded in her ears. He was close enough that she could smell mint on his breath. Too close. She grabbed a stack of files from her desk and stomped toward the filing cabinet. “Don’t play games with me. You know the feeling’s mutual,” she growled.

  “That I hate you?” He righted himself with a slight shrug. “I wouldn’t say that. I’ve always thought you were...interesting.” He lifted one of her business cards from the holder on her desk, turning it between his fingers before tucking it into his pocket. “This murder trial you have, for example. Jack told me about it. A homicide without a body? That’s risky.”

  “Is it? I would think it would be riskier to allow a man to get away with murdering his wife just because he’d found a way to conceal her body.”

  Ben arched one of his eyebrows rakishly. “Maybe. But do you get beyond a reasonable doubt?”

  He leaned one shoulder against the wall and watched her. As he stood there, he folded his arms across his broad chest, silently reminding Sally that he’d never wanted for dates. Women in their law class had draped themselves across him, baking him cookies and inviting him to join their study groups. It was pitiful, and he’d lapped up the attention shamelessly. Ben used women. That’s who he was. Once, before finals, she’d walked into a quiet study room in the library and caught him with a topless girl straddling his lap, his hand snaking up her skirt. He’d had the nerve to smile at Sally over the woman’s bare shoulder as if to say, You wish.

  Well, she didn’t wish. She had self-respect. Ben had never been formally attached to anyone. He used women and dumped them. She may have thought she loved him long ago, but he’d been very clear that he wasn’t interested in any kind of long-term, monogamous relationship. She’d been fooled, but that was a distant and ugly memory. Ten years distant.

  She slammed the filing cabinet shut. He may be hot, but he wasn’t that hot, really. At least, she’d never understood the appeal. He had mahogany hair, slightly tousled, that he wore at a conservative length. He was tall, but not taller than six feet. He was clean-shaven, probably still tattoo-free, and just...generic. His only striking feature was his pair of deep blue eyes shrouded by long black lashes and strong eyebrows. Sally could admit that his eyes were beautiful. Even his glasses could be kind of hot on a different guy. But everything else about Ben was ho-hum. A playboy who liked to have one-night stands? Yawn. She preferred a man with a real edge and some substance that went beyond whatever was in his pants. A man who could make her laugh and think before he rocked her world. And since her broken engagement, she preferred no man at all.

  “If you’ll excuse me, I have some work to do.” She headed toward the door.

  “As do I. And I believe we’re heading to the same place. Remember, we’re partners now.” He stepped aside and waved her through. “After you.”

  She rolled her eyes at his pompous formality as she brushed past, accidentally sweeping her shoulder against his chest. “Narrow doorway,” she mumbled.

  Her attention was gripped by the sight of seven of her colleagues huddled in front of a television set up in a vacant cubicle in the center of the office. They watched her as she approached.

  “Sally, you may want to see this,” Greg said, nodding his head toward the screen.

  She squinted to make out the sight of the gray marble steps of town hall. A lectern was erected in the middle of a swarm of buzzing reporters in subdued jackets. “A press conference? What’s going on?”

  “Your guy Marlow called it.”

  That would be Dennis Marlow, the defense attorney who represented Mitch Kruger in the murder trial. He was a ripe pain in the rear.

  “He called a press conference? On the Kruger case? And he didn’t even have the courtesy to tell me about it?” As soon as the words escaped, she reconsidered her simmering fury. Marlow had fallen far short of courteous during the pretrial phase, so what was one more professional breach?

  She was aware of Ben creeping up to stand behind her. He had all the space in the world, and he had to stand right there, where she could sense him, practically feel the heat as it rose from his body. She couldn’t resist glancing quickly over her shoulder. Yep, there he was, old jerk face, making a conscious decision to invade her personal space and suck up all her air. She’d been much too polite earlier. She’d have to change that.

  Her attention returned to the television as Marlow entered the screen from the right and stood behind the lectern, in a red tie and a black blazer that looked brand-new. “That tie looks expensive,” she murmured, mostly to herself. Marlow didn’t wear expensive ties.

  “Must be an important press conference,” Ben replied close to her ear. “Fancy tie, lots of cameras.”

  She didn’t have the opportunity to respond before Marlow began to speak.

  “I’m Attorney Dennis Marlow, and I represent Mitchell Kruger. My client is accused of murdering his wife almost a year ago. Mr. Kruger has maintained his innocence from day one, and his story has never changed. Namely, that Mrs. Kruger walked out after a heated argument and never returned. We have maintained sincere efforts to locate Mrs. Kruger, but to no avail. Her body was never recovered, and the state’s evidence against my client has always been circumstantial.”

  Sally bristled at this bit of theatrics. Most evidence in any case was circumstantial—it wasn’t as if criminal acts were routinely captured on video. Marlow knew better, but lines like “circumstantial evidence” often played well to juries.

  The attorney continued. “We have cooperated with the investigation without conceding Mr. Kruger’s involvement in his wife’s disappearance. He was not involved. He, too, was a victim.”

  Sally glanced across the crowd of colleagues and caught her friend Tessa’s eye. Tessa made a gesture as if she was about to vomit. Sally shook her head. Mr. Kruger was a victim now? Marlow was really pushing it.

  “I’m pleased to announce that now, on the eve of Mr. Kruger’s trial, we are about to clear his good name once and for all.” Marlow looked up from his notes and gestured to the right of the screen. “My client couldn’t have killed his wife, because she’s with us here today.”

  Sally’s blood rushed to her feet, and a chill settled in its place as a figure crossed the screen to the lectern. She’d looked at hundreds of pictures of Mitch Kruger’s wife over the course of this investigation and in preparation for trial, imagining the terror the poor woman must have felt in her last moments. Sally knew Mrs. Kruger. The shape of her face. The shade of her white-blond hair. Her slender build.

  Through private interviews with her closest friends and family, Sally knew even more than that. She knew that Mrs. Kruger liked country music, line dancing and beer. That she didn’t care for gardening, but kept small potted plants that she tended with love. That she loved her shar-pei, Pookie, and would never, ever have willingly left him with Mitch. Sally knew that Mrs. Kruger was dead.

  But then the woman smiled shyly at the camera and said, “Hello. I’m Ronnie Kruger.”

  And stupid Ben had the nerve to whisper, “Sally, I think there’s a problem with your case.”

  Chapter 2

  Ronnie had never been one for card games. The dubious honor of household poker expert belonged to Mitch. “Everyone has a tell,” he’d once infor
med her over a gin gimlet on the rocks. “A twitch, a smile. Something that lets you know they’re hiding something.”

  She’d taken a sip of her icy drink. Three glasses in, and she no longer pinched her lips against the sourness. “I don’t,” she’d said, lowering the glass to the table and licking her lips. “I come from a large family, so I’ve learned how to be a good liar.”

  “Is that a fact?” One corner of his mouth had lifted in amusement.

  “Absolutely. In a big family, someone’s always looking over your shoulder. I learned a long time ago that if I ever wanted any privacy, I’d have to know how to keep secrets.”

  He’d clinked the ice cubes in his glass thoughtfully. “Maybe you can keep secrets, but you can’t hide them completely.”

  “Oh?”

  He’d set his drink down and placed his hand on the table. Then he’d rubbed the tip of his forefinger against the pad of his thumb. “That’s it, you know. Your tell. I noticed it when you told me you liked the restaurant I chose last week.”

  “Huh.” He was right. She’d hated that restaurant. She’d raised her glass and downed the remainder. “And what’s yours?” This was back in the days when they’d flirted with each other, when she’d still found something exciting and arousing about him.

  “Not me.” He’d winked. “I’ve eliminated all of my tells. That’s why I’m a hell of a poker player.”

  She’d found him sexy and dangerous in that moment, for all the wrong reasons. Here was a man who could read her body’s secrets while he remained almost a complete mystery to her. It was naive on her part to believe he’d never turn it against her. Liars lie, and erasing his own tell simply meant he was an especially practiced liar.

  Unlike her. Ever since that conversation, she’d realized how right he was. She was a terrible liar. Her fingertips jumped and twitched when she felt nervous, as she did right now. A press conference? She hadn’t expected that, and this lawyer that Mitch had somehow scrounged up gave her the creeps. He looked like a kid at his own birthday party, hopping around as if he was loaded up on cake and ice cream and drooling about the new bicycle in the driveway.