Injustice for All by J. A. Jance Page A

assess the effect of her husband’s phone call, hoping for some sign to indicate if she was glad to see me or if she wanted me to drop into a hole someplace. Her face remained inscrutable. “Is Darrell coming up?” I asked, for want of something better to say. “He wanted to, but I told him no. He thinks he can talk me into changing my mind. It won’t work. I told him I’m staying here the rest of the weekend. I had planned to, anyway. There’s no sense in going home just to fight.”
    “Will they cancel the workshop?”
    She smiled mirthlessly. “Not even Trixie Bowdeen has nerve enough to go through with it after what happened to Sig.”
    “Who’s she?”
    “Chairman of the parole board.”
    “You don’t like her much, do you.”
    “No,” she responded.
    With my hair combed and a splash of after-shave on my face, I surveyed the roll-away with an eye to making it look more like someone had slept in it and less as though a heavyweight wrestling match had occurred. I gathered up the sheets and blankets and started to put it to rights. “Beau?”
    Busy with the bed, I didn’t look up when she spoke. “What?” “Do you think badly of me?”
    I abandoned the roll-away. “Think badly of you! Are you kidding? Why should 1?”
    “Because of last night. I didn’t mean to c I-” In two steps I stood beside her.
    “Look, lady,” I said gruffly, placing my hand on her shoulder and giving her a gentle shake. “It’s the blind leading the blind. I was worried about how you’d feel this morning, afraid you’d be embarrassed, think I’d taken advantage. “
    She reached out and took my hand. She kissed the back of it, then turned it over and moved it from her hairline to her chin, guiding my fingers in a slow caress along the curve of her cheek.
    “I’m not embarrassed,” she said softly. “Greedy, but not embarrassed. ” She allowed my hand to stray down her neck and invade the soft folds of her robe. She was wearing nothing underneath.
    Her robe fell open before me. Our coupling the night before had been in pitch-blackness.
    Now my eyes feasted hungrily on her body. She was no lithe virgin. Hers was the gentle voluptuousness of a grown woman, with a hint of fullness of breast and hip that follows childbearing. A pale web of stretch marks lingered in mute testimony.
    My hand cupped her breast. It changed subtly but perceptibly. The nipple drew erect, the soft flesh taut and warm beneath my fingers. She caught my chin in her hand and turned my face to hers until our lips met. “Please, Beau,” she whispered, her mouth against mine. I shed my clothes on the spot while she lay naked before me, tempting as a pagan sacrifice offered to me alone. My fingers and tongue searched her body, exploring her, demanding admittance. She gave herself freely, opening before me, denying me nothing. She took all I had to give and more, her body arching to meet my every move. A final frenzy left her trembling against my shoulder, my face buried in her hair. “It wasn’t an accident, was it?” she said, when she could talk. “What wasn’t an accident?”
    “Last night.”
    “I don’t understand.’.” I was mystified.
    “While you showered, I was wondering if last night was an accident or if it could have been that way all along.”
    I raised up on one elbow to look at her. Her face was serious, contemplative.
    Understanding dawned slowly. No one had ever before made love to her like that. Dan-ell Watkins had never tapped the wellspring of woman in her-not in eighteen years of marriage. I kissed her tenderly. “That’s the way it’s supposed to be.”
    “The bastard!” she said fiercely. “The first-class bastard! I’ll take him to the cleaners.”
    I had unwittingly unleashed Hurricane Ginger into the world. “Maybe he doesn’t know any better.” I inadvertently defended him, and she gave me a shove that sent me sprawling from the bed onto the floor. “He’s been giving it away to everyone else. By