BEYOND REASONABLE DOUBT

chapter 2

Sienna's POV

His head snaps up like I've woken him from a trance. "Sorry, sorry that's me?"

"That's mine," I say, pointing toward the counter, and push to my feet before he can argue. I am not about to let Suit Guy see me lose a coffee cup to a confused stranger. I cross the room, reach the counter at the same moment he turns around

holding two cups, and he extends one toward me without a word.

"That's mine," I say again, taking it, and add, because I can't help myself, "Thank you. You're still an ass, though."

"Noted." His lips twitch. "For what it's worth, my mother raised me better than this."

“I'll take your word for it. Clearly the lesson didn't take."

"Clearly." He studies me a beat too long. "I'd apologize properly, but then this would be over."

“What will be over?"

"This." He gestures vaguely between us. "Meet me here tomorrow morning. We can negotiate terms.”

"You're a lawyer," I say, because I'd know that particular brand of maddening confidence anywhere. I grew up surrounded

by it my father, two of my three brothers, and up until two years ago, me. "Aren't you."

"Guilty," he says, and the word lands harder than it should, given where I'm headed in less than two hours. "You handle Manners 101. I'll handle the negotiation.” He turns, and just like that, he's gone, swallowed by the morning crowd before I

can decide whether I'm supposed to be flattered or furious.

I stand there a second too long before returning to my table, irritated at myself for watching the door long after he's

disappeared through it. Meeting him again would be reckless. Fun, possibly, but reckless, and I don't chase recklessness.

Not anymore.

I open my laptop, delete the half-written headline about "Mr. Hotness," and force myself to focus on the actual story I'm here to cover. An hour later, I've got a solid draft of today's column, and I pack up and head for the courthouse with fifteen minutes to spare, which turns out to be exactly enough.

The plaza outside is chaotic protest signs, camera crews staking out the steps, a line to get through security that wraps halfway down the block. Inside, the courtroom itself is somehow worse, every bench crammed with reporters and spectators fighting for a sightline. I squeeze into a gap in the back row, pull out the new leather notebook I bought specifically for this trial, and write across the top of the first page: Murder: Guilty or Innocent? Underneath, I list the questions I want answered by the time this is over, the same ritual I've followed through every major trial I've covered.

I've barely finished when the bailiff calls the room to order. The jury files in. The defendant and his legal team enter next, though the wall of cameras blocks most of my view. The judge follows, and we all rise, which somehow makes my sightline even worse. By the time we're seated again, both lead attorneys have approached the bench for a brief

exchange with the judge before turning back toward the gallery.

That's when the defense attorney steps forward for opening statements, and my stomach drops straight through the floor.

It's him.

Suit Guy. Coffee thief. The man who bought my drink and vanished with a smirk twenty minutes ago is standing in front of the jury box in a courtroom, and it takes me a full five minutes to remember I'm supposed to be taking notes instead of

gaping at him like he's grown a second head.

“Nelson Ashcroft met Jennifer Wright on a night she was terrified of the man she was dating," he begins, voice carrying easily across the room without a hint of a microphone. "Most people would have looked away. He didn't. He saw a woman in trouble and offered her a way out a job, a safe place to stay, nothing more. DNA evidence has already confirmed that the child Ms. Wright was carrying belonged to her boyfriend, not my client. My client never had a relationship with her beyond kindness. And yet here we are, because the prosecution needed someone to blame, and my client's fingerprints

happened to be on a doorknob in a house he'd visited before."

He pauses, lets that settle, then continues. "My fingerprints are probably on that same door. Does that make me guilty of anything? No. Has a crime been committed on that property? Absolutely by the prosecution's own logic, several times over, considering how many hands have touched that knob over the years. If fingerprints on a doorknob are enough to put

a man on trial for murder, then every person in this room should be worried about what they touched on their way in this

morning. Not a weapon. Not a motive. A doorknob."

He weaves in a joke that pulls a ripple of laughter from the gallery, then pivots hard into something quieter, something that has half the room leaning forward. By the time he finishes, I've filled two pages of notes and I still can't decide whether I

was watching a legal argument or a performance built to seduce twelve strangers into doubt.

I already know the answer. I watched him do the same thing to an entire coffee line an hour ago, and it worked on me too,

right up until I remembered I had somewhere to be.

1 glance around the room, checking the prosecution's table for a reaction, and find the lead prosecutor scribbling furiously while his younger associate whispers something behind a raised hand. Whatever they walked in with this morning, it wasn't a plan for this. The jury, for their part, looks exactly like I feel unsettled, a little charmed, unsure whether they should be. That's the danger of a man who can turn a doorknob into reasonable doubt. He doesn't just argue a case. He rewires the room around it.

I force myself to write down the parts that actually matter instead of the parts that made my pulse do something inconvenient, and by the time the judge calls a short recess, my notebook is half full and my opinion of Suit Guy has

shifted from irritating to something considerably more dangerous.

He's in trouble. The expensive, blue-eyed, impossible-to-ignore kind, the sort my father would call "exactly your type" in a

tone that isn't a compliment.

Which means my job for the next several weeks just got significantly more complicated, because the last thing a reporter covering a murder trial needs is to spend it distracted by opposing counsel. I glance toward the defense table one more time before I Siennach myself doing it and force my eyes back to the page. Somewhere behind me, a camera shutter

clicks. I don't need to become tomorrow's headline instead of the one writing it.

One reckless night with a man like that would be one thing, a story I could tell myself was contained, controlled, over before it started meaning anything. Anything more than that is a mistake I've already made once, with someone who

taught me exactly how expensive a man's charm can get.

Once was enough. I intend to keep it that way, no matter how good he looked crossing that courtroom, and no matter how

thoroughly he just proved he knows exactly what he's doing with an audience.

Court resumes twenty minutes later. I don't look at the defense table again.

I'looked four more times.