THE DEFENDER by Adrienne Giordano Page B

father.”
    “It’s the truth.”
    Except, her eyes got a little...misty. Oh, hell no. “Penny?”
    He took one step—one—and she paddled her hands. “Don’t touch me. That’ll do me in.”
    Hello, Confusion, thanks for visiting. “Okay. Sure. Sort of lost here, though.”
    “You don’t get it. From the time I’d been a lowly prelaw student, interning at various firms, doing any grunt work I could find, I’ve been trying to separate myself from my father’s reputation. All to prove I could make it on my own steam. That nepotism— ” she spat the word, like acid burning her tongue “—hadn’t gotten me my spot at one of the top firms in Chicago. It makes me realize all these years of sleepless nights, of studying cases until my mind couldn’t absorb any more, was worth it.”
    “That’s good, right?”
    “No! You’re the man who should hate me and want nothing to do with me. Instead you’re the one who gets me.”
    Who’d have thunk Killer Cupcake had her own spot, deep inside, where she hid all that self-doubt?
    She stared at the phone he handed her, ran her thumb over the keypad he’d touched probably thousands of times. “You terrify me. You hate what I do for a living. A job I love. If I survive this Heath mess, it’ll most likely be because of your efforts. And that’s the rub, because you’ll break my heart. I know you will. One way or another, I’ll walk away fractured.”
    Russ opened his mouth. Nothing. Nada. Not one coherent thought. Killer Cupcake had just ripped herself open in front of him and...and...what?
    Nothing.
    “I’m—”
    Her hand shot up. “Let’s forget this. Please. Just wipe the last few seconds clean. I’ll call my dad, you won’t say anything and we will never speak of this again.”
    She spun away, headed for the mudroom. Stop her. He beat her to the door, smacked his hand on it. “What if I want to speak of it again?”
    Slowly, she shook her head.
    “Not now,” Russ said. “After we get through this. When we don’t have your client sitting between us. Can we do that?”
    He waited a few seconds, stood there like a dummy because Killer Cupcake trusted him enough to evacuate her feelings and it paralyzed him. She’d probably never open up to him again. Maybe that was good, though. Women liked all this emotional upheaval. Men? Not . But the idea of Penny shoving all her angst away didn’t comfort him much, either. What a mess.
    Finally, she tipped her head down, gave a little nod.
    Home run. “Okay. Later, then.”
    She looked up at the door. “I need to pass so I can call my office.”
    He lifted his hand and opened the door for her. “I’ll give you privacy.”
    Fifteen minutes later, she came through the door again, spotted him leaning against the counter, stopped a few feet from him and held out his phone. “We’re good to go.”

Chapter Five
    “You don’t have to walk me in,” Penny said to Russ while they waited for the elevator to scoop them up at the garage level of her condo building.
    For the nine months Penny had lived in this building, she’d been a believer that the extra monthly fee—convenience tax, as she called it—for a building with a gated garage was worth it. Now, with Colin Heath threatening her, she was sure of it and would never again complain about shoes she could have bought with the convenience-tax money. Even if the slow gate drove her mad, she remained thankful for its presence.
    “This is a nice perk,” Russ said.
    Casual conversation. That was what this was, because she knew that he knew that she knew they were both thinking the universe had royally flipped them off. After the crazy emotional day, one that included the two of them admitting their mutual attraction, the god of love decided this would be the night a judge received a death threat and the extra marshal assigned to Elizabeth Brooks would go to the judge.
    Not wanting to leave Elizabeth with only one marshal, Russ and Brent decided Brent would stay